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THE EARTHQUAKE 



THE EARTHQUAKE 



BY 

ARTHUR TRAIN '^ 



'The End of worldly life awaits us all: 
Let him who may, gaia honor ere death." 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
NEW YORK :: :: :: 1918 



Ocrf-L, 



^ 






o«\0 



COPTBIOHT, 1918, BT 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
Published March, 1918 



COPYRIGHT. 1917, 1918, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO. 



m I9ISI8 




CrA4 9 2t5:2'j /\_ 



TO 

ARTHUR WOODS 

A PATRIOTIC CITIZEN WHO AS 

COMMISSIONER OF POLICE OF NEW YORK CITT 

1914-1917 

REALIZED THE HIGHEST IDEALS OF 

PUBLIC SERVICE 

THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB PAGE 

I. Myself — John Stanton 3 

II. My Household 46 

III. My Friends 81 

IV. My Wife and Others 121 

V. My Daughter 162 

VI. My Soldier Son 175 

VII. Wiri- Jack Has Gone 214 

MIL "Of Shoes — of Ships— of Sealing- 

Wax— " 236 

IX. What the War Has Done for Us . . 276 



THE EARTHQUAKE 



"And, behold, the Ix)rd passed by, and a great and strong 
wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before 
the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the 
wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: 
and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the 
fire: and after the fire a still small voice." 

"And the Lord said unto him: '. . . And it shall come 
to pass, that him that escapeth the sword of Hazacl shall Jehu 
slay: and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall 
Elisha slay. Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all 
the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth 
which hath not kissed him.' " — I Kings xix, 11-19. 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

I 

MYSELF— JOHN STANTOxN 

Rip Van Winkle was no less in touch with affairs in 
the valley of the Hudson on his return home after his 
twenty years' sleep among the Catskills than my 
wife, my daughter, and myself were with those of 
these United States when we descended from our 
sleeper to the upper platform of the Grand Central 
Station upon our return to New York City in the 
autumn of 1917. In many respects, allowing for 
the greater velocity of life in the twentieth century, 
our cases were not dissimilar. For ten months, under 
a doctor's orders, we had wandered in the Orient, and 
returned home to find ourselves in what was presently 
to prove a new world. 

I had been a fairly prosperous bond merchant, the 
junior partner in a well-connected and reputable Wall 
Street house; not one of the Grecian-temple variety, 
with pillars of Carrara and floors of on^^x and jasper, 
but a modest establishment up one flight, where we 
did a legitimate business in strictly investment secur- 

3 



THE E.AJITHQUAKE 

ities, dividing among the three of us a yearly net 
profit of approximately forty thousand dollars. Morris, 
Lord & Stanton is our firm name, and I was and still 
am the Stanton — John Stanton, A.B., Harvard '86. 

If you care, now or later, to take the trouble to look 
me up in "Who's Who" you will learn that the author 
of these memoirs was born in Worcester, ]\Iassa- 
chusetts, December 23, 1865; the son of John Adams 
Stanton, a banker of that place, and Mary Stuart 
Thayer, his wife; that he attended the schools of his 
native cit}^ and afterward St. Paul's, at Concord, New 
Hampshire; graduated in due course from Harvard as 
above; went into business in New York City; married 
Helen Morris — the sister of his present partner — on 
April 30, 1887; is the father of two children and the 
author of "Bonds Versus Stocks — a Handbook for 
Investors," a "History of American Stock Exchanges," 
and "American Railroad Securities." In my capacity 
as my own biographer I also included in the personal 
sketch with which I furnished the editors of that 
interesting publication the valuable information that 
I was a Republican, an Episcopalian, and had "never 
as yet held public oflBce." 

That was the history of the John Stanton who shook 
the dust of Wall Street from his feet toward the end 
of the year 1916 to seek health in regions beyond the 
reach of the telephone and the daily newspaper. 
Sometimes I am inclined to feel that the life of that 

4 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

particular John Stanton ended there and then. At any 
rate, if he still lives he is, in fact, another and different 
man. The first followed a soft, ease-loving, thought- 
less sort of life, content to go with the crowd, spending 
his money as freely as he made it, running to seed 
spiritually and intellectually, his only ambition being 
to build up so extensive a business that he could re- 
tire at the earliest possible moment and amuse him- 
self — presumably as much as possible at the watering- 
places of continental Europe. 

To-day — Well, it is the other and I trust the 
better John Stanton who writes these pages. Indeed, 
I not only view my ten months in the Pacific as a long 
sleep, but I account the whole fifty-two previous years 
of my life as no less spent in dreaming — the dreaming 
of the materialistic, essentiallj' selfish, if good-natured, 
American business man, the dreamer of full-fed dreams. 
It was only when I stepped out of that transconti- 
nental train that I began to wake up. It was only 
then that I felt the first faint anticipatory quiver of 
the shock I was soon to get — the shock of the earth- 
quake that in the next thirty days was to set my brain 
to reeling, to turn my domestic existence topsjiiurvy, 
and to leave me clutching at my heart with weak and 
trembling hands. 

The year 1915 had seen munition and industrial 
stocks generally rocketing starward; bonds had been 
strong and trade brisk. We at the office gave the 

5 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

war, at most, two years to run and capitalized our 
profits with the rest of the Street. 

The demand for ships of wood and iron, for copper, 
steel, dyes, and machinery was beyond anything 
hitherto known or imagined. To own a steamboat or 
a foundry was to be a millionaire. One of our clients 
had a steel-rolling mill out in Ohio and another in New 
Jersey. He wanted to get hold of half a dozen more 
and have a merger. Nothing loath, I undertook the 
job. For five months I slaved day and night, sleeping 
most of the time on trains, paying no attention to 
what I ate, my mind concentrated upon a single ob- 
ject — to float the Phoenicia Steel Company. The pa- 
pers were just ready to be signed when the peace 
leak" nearly wrecked the whole enterprise. For two 
days it looked as though my merger would never 
merge, as though my eggs would never scramble; and 
then, the excitement having subsided, the respective 
treasurers aflBxed their signatures to the necessary 
documents, shook hands with one another, and it was 
done. 

That afternoon I sat limp in a leather armchair in 
Frank Brewer's office and heard my doom from the 
stern lips of New York's leadmg nerve specialist. 

"Stanton," he exclaimed impatiently, "you've just 
missed a complete breakdown ! Twenty-four hours 
more and I'd have had to order you to a sanatorium. 
You've got to quit right here and now, give up your 

6 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

business entirely and go away for a year. No; don't 
call up your office 1 You'll do exactly what I tell you 
or I won't be responsible for consequences. I'll see 
both your partners — they're old friends of mine. 
Now go up to the club and take a Turkish bath and a 
rub. Then drink a pint of champagne and go to 
sleep. I don't want you to go home. I'll call to see 
you during the evening." 

I did as I was told, including the champagne. 
Strange to say, I slept. At nine o'clock I woke to 
find Dr. Brewer and my two partners at my side. 

"It's all fixed!" said Morris gently. "I've told 
Helen she must get ready to leave New York on 
Saturday." 

"But—" I protested dizzily. "There's Margery." 

"Ought to be glad to get her out of New Yorkl" 
snapped Brewer. "No eighteen-year-old girl has any 
business here!" 

"And she says she's crazy to go to Japan!" added 
Lord with a grin. 

"Japan!" 

"And, by the way," continued my brother-in-law, 
"Tom Blanchard happened to be in the office when 
Brewer telephoned this afternoon, and he said he 
wasn't going back to his place in Hawaii again this 
year, and that he'd be glad to have you go there and 
stay — all of you — as long as you want. It's a sugar- 
plantation, you know — smiling, brown-skinned na- 

7 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

tives, hammocks, hula-hula girls, and all that sort of 
thing!" 

"Yes," I nodded. " 'On the Beach at Waikiki'— I 
know! You fellows seem to have mapped out my 
whole future life for me. Well, if you've squared it 
with Helen and got her to agree to separate her sub- 
debutante daughter from the follies of 1916, I'll go 
you — to Japan or Java or Jerusalem, for as long as 
you say, and a day longer !" 

And so I went. 

My wife, Helen, my daughter, Margery, and I 
sailed on the Canadian Pacific Steamship Empress of 
China on December 19, 1916, for the Far East, where 
our travels, our impressions, and our adventures have 
nothing whatever to do with the purposes of this nar- 
rative. 

On the steamer the Canadians and English aboard 
would have nothing to do with us. Even in the usu- 
ally friendly atmosphere of the smoking-room I was 
left to myself, except for a couple of compatriots who 
agreed with me that American stock with the Allies 
had gone down badly. Indeed, certain passengers, 
especially the Canadians, took pains to air their un- 
complimentary views of the people of the United 
States in tones obviously intended to be over- 
heard. 

Altogether, I was glad when we got to Yokohama, 

8 



IVIYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

and so far as Japan was concerned, I observed per- 
sonally none of the popular hostility to things Ameri- 
can I had been led to believe existed there from my 
reading of newspapers and magazines in the United 
States. 

After two delightful weeks we took ship from 
Nagasaki for Manila, where I chartered a government 
revenue steamer and cruised for six weeks more in 
the archipelago, visiting some islands where the na- 
tives had never before seen an American or even a 
white man, though owing allegiance to the United 
States. It was the trip of my life, and, in addition to 
the small arsenal of head-axes and war-knives lying at 
the other end of the table upon which I am writing, I 
carried away with me the emblem of the Sacred Turtle 
tattooed upon my tummy — which proves, to those 
who know, that I am blood brother of Jose Aguinaldo 
Pejaros and a subchieftain of a tribe with an unpro- 
nounceable name, whose members for ugliness leave 
nothing to be desired. 

During this period we received no maU and saw no 
newspapers, these last, before we left, having been 
pronounced anathema by Brewer. 

"Whatever you do, don't look at a paper for three 
months!" he had ordered; and I had humbly prom- 
ised to obey. Indeed, it was no burden to carry out 
his injunction. I could not have done otherwise — 
there were no papers to read. In Manila, of course, we 

9 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

had been in touch for about forty-eight hours with 
our native land, long enough to bring our war news 
roughly up to date and to glance over President 
Wilson's Message of January 22d. As for our going 
into the war, the idea seemed to me at that time ut- 
terly preposterous. I hadn't believed that anything 
could drive us in, or that, even if we went in, anything 
would come of it. In Japan, Manila, and Honolulu 
it seemed to be assumed that there was no real in- 
tention on the part of our government to do more 
than make enough of a demonstration to save the na- 
tional face. 

I confess that, so far as I was concerned, there 
wasn't any national face left. To my mind, the Presi- 
dent had been stalling from the outset. The "Peace 
Without Victory" speech, which we got, as I have 
said, at Manila, finished it for me. It was all very 
noble, very magnanimous, very benign, and very high- 
falutin, I thought. W^e were just fixing things up so as 
to be on the right side of everybody after the war was 
over. Mr. Wilson had said: "Victory would mean 
peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed 
upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humil- 
iation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and 
would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory, 
upon which terms of peace would rest — not perma- 
nently, but only as upon quicksand." 

Fine, I said, if we were dealing with a government 
10 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

that didn't countenance, if not order, the cutting off 
of women's breasts, the poisoning of wells, the drown- 
ing of babes in arms with their mothers, the violation 
of young and innocent girls 1 But you might as well 
consider the feelings of a ruffian who had debauched 
your daughter and refrain from locking him up be- 
cause his confinement in jail "would be accepted 
in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, 
and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter mem- 
ory" after he finally got out. That was how I felt 
about it. 

The President's speech of February 3, 1917, de- 
livered upon the severance of relations with Germany 
— which we picked up in Mindanao — had cheered me 
somewhat. That, I admitted, looked more like busi- 
ness. But I felt by no means sure that it was not put 
forth with a belief almost approaching certainty that 
the German Government would back down; and if it 
backed down I knew we should never go to war. The 
sentence "We are the sincere friends of the German 
people and earnestly desire to remain at peace with 
the government which speaks for them" bore an olive- 
branch that I expected would herald the return of 
Bernstorff. 

Of course I know better to-day; for we all are aware 
now of what Mr. Wilson knew then — what Germany 
had been doing here in the way of distributing blood- 
money and hiring criminals, and of what the Kaiser 

11 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

and his ministers had planned and even threatened 
against the United States. 

Even if finally we actually declared war, I did not 
believe that that act would have any concrete result. 
We were entirely unprepared, and the war would be 
over long before we could send a properly trained and 
adequately armed body of troops to Europe. I fig- 
ured the thing out in about the same way the German 
General Staff had figured it out. Nobody wanted war 
except a few jingoes in the East; free Americans would 
never stand for conscription, and our entry would have 
no effect except to divert back into the United States 
the tide of munitions flowing steadily to England and 
France. To that extent Germany would actually 
profit by our action. 

We were visiting a native village, I remember, in 
one of the coral islands the first week in April when 
the captain of our revenue cutter picked up the news 
by wireless from Manila that the President had pro- 
claimed a state of war between the United States and 
the Imperial German Government. Naturally, the 
news occasioned a good deal of excitement on the 
steamer and the captain dressed ship and fired a 
salute, which sent the natives scurrying to the woods. 
Helen's first thought, of course, was of our son, a 
junior at Harvard. Looking at me a little anxiously, 
she said: 

"Jack's not old enough to go, is he?" 
12 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

"Oh, no!" I answered resolutely. "Jack's only a 
boy at college. Besides, the war will be over long be- 
fore we can send any troops across. They'd send the 
regular army first, anyhow." 

I told her that quite sincerely. It never dawned 
upon me to think otherwise. Jack was a kid. He 
didn't have sense enough to change his shoes after he 
bad been out in the rain. Only a year or so ago I had 
had to stand over him with a club to make him brush 
his teeth, and he had hated a bath just as much as 
the devil is supposed to hate consecrated water. 

"Oh, no!" I reassured her. "You don't need to 
worry a single minute about Jack. He might go to 
the next war, but he'll get no chance at this." 

And so we steamed on among the islands, under 
cloudless skies, reading novels and playing bridge, 
until, six weeks later, we again reached Manila and 
regretfully bade farewell to our captain. 

From Manila we took a steamer for Honolulu, and 
a week later arrived by coasting vessel at Ilao, where 
Tom Blanchard's sugar-factory is situated, and began 
our lotos-eating life on the plantation. There for 
several months we led the existence commonly re- 
ferred to as idyllic, keeping no hours, sleeping fourteen 
out of the twenty-four when we chose, swimming in 
crystalline water inside the reefs, fishing for rainbow- 
hued pauu and hilu outside the islands, and waited 
upon hand and foot by impassive Chinese servants, 

13 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

who anticipated every thought we either had or should 
have had. 

The bungalow was half a mile from the sugar-fac- 
tory, on the other side of a point, and had its own dock. 
There was no telegraph; we had no neighbors; and 
there was no one to speak to except a taciturn super- 
intendent, who looked like an ex-convict and who lived 
with a half-caste wife named Mo-a. Once a week a 
small steamer dropped a bag of mail at our landing, 
including a bundle of morning, evening, and Sunday 
New York papers about as big as a hogshead. 

At first we used to rush down to the jetty and tear 
off the "v\Tappers before the Chink could bring them up 
to the veranda — just couldn't wait ! We wanted to 
know exactly what the government was doing; how 
many hundred yards the French and English had 
gained from the boches since the week before; how 
much nearer Cadorna was to Triest; and whether the 
Czar had been put at peeling potatoes or wheeling a 
barrow. Gradually, however, we lost interest. It 
took all the joy out of life to spend whole days waist- 
high in newspapers — all alike and full of vain repeti- 
tions — trying to arrange the stuff in its proper se- 
quence. When you get about forty newspapers at 
once there is a striking monotony, even about war 
news. 

Finally we reached the point when we couldn't 
look at them — except for the head-lines. To see my 

14 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

namesake, John— Head or Number One Boy — come 
staggering up the beach with that huge load of brown- 
wrapped rolls of printed matter on his back filled us 
with gloom. In the first place, it was all weeks old 
when it got to us; and then there was so much of it! 
Stale tons of it! Usually after lying unopened for 
days, those papers found their way down to Mo-a, 
who liked to cut out the pictures in the supplements 
and paste them on the wall of her house with fish- 
glue that she boiled herself. 

I would occasionally find her gazing rapturously at 
some rotogravure print of George M. Cohan, William 
Jennings Bryan, or Colonel House, and murmuring 
"Beau'fu' man!" In ladies she took no interest, and 
she would look contemptuously at the reproductions 
of our most brilliant Broadway stars — at Jane Cowl, 
Billie Burke, or our own Maxine, and shake her head 
and mutter "No-a-good!" 

You see, the atmosphere was somehow antipathetic 
to intellectual exertion. Our previous New York 
ideas seemed — how shall I say ? — " irrelevant, incom- 
petent, and immaterial." We lived like princes and 
it cost us only a few cents a day; we couldn't have 
bought anything even if we had needed it — which we 
didn't; there was nothing in the world of Ilao to 
spend a single cent on, and I don't believe that liter- 
ally there was more than six dollars Mex. in the place. 

There was nothing to worry us, no duties to per- 
15 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

form, "nowhere to go but out" — and "out" was as 
near heaven as anything I have ever known. We 
talked of New York as if it might have been Calcutta. 
We read of the war, but it did not seem real. We 
knew that men were suffering and dying, but it was 
like reading about it years afterward. It was our own 
daily life there at Ilao that was real to us — the other 
thing was literary, like our books; so we sat round 
and read frayed copies out of Blanchard's library — 
Marion Crawford, Whyte-Melville, William Dean 
Howells, and others of a bygone literary age. I men- 
tion this because now it seems so extraordmary that, 
with our country at war, we should have been dream- 
ing over "Saracinesca," or "Mr. Isaacs," or "The 
Rise of Silas Lapham," while the bodies of thousands 
of our fellow human beings lay rotting out in No 
Man's Land. 

A Wall Street bond broker has no time for dreaming 
and he has no visions at all; but there at Ilao we 
dreamed that we were young again, and we had time 
to wonder why we no longer had any visions. And 
sometimes, though I missed, in a way, the activity of 
New York, the complex interests of work and amuse- 
ment, our hundreds of friends and the excitement of 
the game, I told myself that now, for the first time, 
in this distant place, with none of my own kind about 
except my wife and daughter, I was in a position to 
estimate the real value of the sort of life I had worked 
so hard to live. Was it, I asked myself, worth the 

16 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

candle? After all, did I get anything out of it — at a 
thousand times the cost — better than I got out of life 
at Ilao ? 

A bombshell fell among us one day, however, which 
shattered our dreaming. It had been arranged that 
after his spring examinations Jack should join us; and, 
now that July had come, we were daily expecting a 
letter containing the news that he had started West 
and giving us the approximate date of his arrival. I 
had been out with one of the Chinamen fishing for 
hilu when I saw the steamer rounding the headland. 
As she was several hours ahead of time and there was 
no one at the landing, we rowed over to meet her. 
The captain, a red-faced sea-dog, with watery eyes, 
was standing on the bridge. 

" Hello V'l shouted. " What's the news ? " 

He mopped his forehead with a yellow madras 
handkerchief and regarded me thoughtfully. I was a 
perennial object of curiosity to him. 

"They've put through conscription," he answered 
hoarsely, "and sold a couple of billion dollars' bond 
issue. Looks like Uncle Sam meant business — after 
all," he added. 

Sitting in my pongee suit in that flimsy fishing-boat, 
rising and falling with my Chinaman in the wash of 
that stinking coasting steamer, the significance of what 
he said did not get across to me. Ilao would be just 
the same, no matter how many conscripts might be 
drafted or how many billions were raised through 

17 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

bond issues or otherwise. That same wilting sun 
would blaze down on that same sagging old jetty, 
covered with its loose ends of hemp and its empty 
hogsheads; the same stoical Chinaman would plod 
down to meet the weekly steamer; and from the set- 
tlement behind the point the same softly crooned 
songs would rise under the moonlight to the sad wail 
of the ukulele. 

" Sure ! " I retorted. " What'd you expect ? " 

The captain did not answer my question. He prob- 
ably had had no expectations in the matter. 

"Here's a letter for you I" he called down, taking 
it from inside his cap. He passed it to a deck-hand, 
who relayed it over the side to me. " Look out there 1 '* 
he warned us, as he gave the jingle, and the steamer, 
which had not made fast, began to back out. 

The Chink pulled a few strokes away, while I lit a 
cigarette and watched the old tub back nearly into 
the coral reef, swing her nose round, and head for the 
open sea. Then the jingle rang again, her propeller 
thrashed the water like a hippo taking a mud-bath, 
and she spurted ahead into the rollers. 

"An' a hundred million for the Red Cross 1" bel- 
lowed the captain across the intervening waves. "I 
forgot that!" 

"Red Cross!" — that was pretty fine, I thought. 
Then I looked at the handwriting on the envelope, 
saw that it was from Jack, and tore it open. 

18 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

"Dear Dad,^^ it ran, in a childish scrawl. "Most 
of the fellows are going to Plattsburg, so I thought 
you wouldn't mind if I went along, too. You will be 
coming home soon, anyhow. If I should be lucky 
enough to grab off a commission, there wouldn't be 
any chance of my going abroad for a long time yet. 
Lots of love to mother and Margery. The weather is 
ripping ! — Aff 'ly. Jack." 

The boy's letter gave me a mixed feeling of pride 
and disappointment. I was crazy to see him, of course; 
but it was quite natural and very creditable that he 
should want to get some military training. That he 
would ever actually be an officer in command of men 
was absurd. He hadn't the remotest idea of discipline. 

Well, Plattsburg was a good thing for the health, 
anyhow, and I didn't blame him for wanting to go 
along with the rest of his friends. Nevertheless, the 
letter did not rest easily in my pocket as I trudged 
across the beach to the bungalow where Helen was 
reading in the hammock. I tossed it into her lap, 
without comment, and she gave a little cry of joy. 
\Mien she had read it, however, she lifted a white face 
to me and said simply: 

" Oh, John ! Let's go home ! " 

Our trip back was smooth and uneventful. Gradu- 
ally we gathered up the threads of what had been 

19 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

going on in our absence and came to realize that the 
United States had gone into the war in earnest; but 
Europe seemed a long way off and it did not occur to 
us that our own lives would be made in any way 
different by what had occurred. My health was now 
completely re-established and we were all tanned as 
brown as native islanders. 

In Frisco we saw plenty of young fellows in khaki, 
and occasionally, on our way across the continent, 
passed a troop train upon a siding Jammed with ruddy 
lads, who waved to us out of car-windows over white- 
painted inscriptions of "Can the Kaiser!" or "Berlin 
or Bust!" or "Potsdam Express!" But, in spite of 
what we read in the papers and the magazines, all of 
which we bought, in spite of the officers in uniform 
and the printed admonitions from Mr. Hoover, placed 
so conspicuously in the dining-car, it did not seem 
somehow in any way to affect us. We were at war — 
yes; a lot of men were going over to fight — if peace 
wasn't declared first; the government was going to 
raise a stupendous sum of money and had embarked 
upon a gigantic programme of preparation; but — 
other people, not we, were doing it ! 

We were just spectators ! It was like seeing a big 
show at the Hippodrome from excellently chosen 
seats, or watching a procession on Fifth Avenue from 
a window. We could go home and to bed whenever 
we felt like it. Our reaction was that, though we 

20 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

should like to get into the game and help, It was all 
being handled by some one else, and there was really 
nothing for us to do except to go on living as usual. 
That was the delusion from which we were suffering 
when we stepped off the train at the Grand Central 
Station that bright October morning. 

Rene, our lame French chauffeur, whom we had 
left on half wages during our absence — "much too 
good to let go" had been our theory — was waiting for 
us with a fur lap-robe over his arm on the curb out- 
side the station, and our smart little Renault landaulet, 
which had just come from the shop, looked almost 
like new. Our other servants had been sent away and 
our house on East Seventy-second Street had been left 
in charge of a caretaker. 

"You had better go to the Chatwold for a day or 
two," I suggested to my wife; "then you can take 
plenty of time to engage your servants. I think I'll 
drop down to the oflBce to see how things are going. 
Probably I'll be up to lunch." 

We were back in New York, back in our home town, 
back in our old lives — that is, we thought we were 
back to them. 

"Where's Morris?" I asked twenty minutes later 
as I stepped into our private office and shook my 
partner Lord by the hand. 

"Morris?" he repeated, lifting his eyebrows. 
"Didn't you know? Oh, you probably didn't get my 

21 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

letter. Why, your brother-in-law pulled up stakes 
last week and has gone down to Washington to help 
McAdoo." 

"Gone to Washington!" I repeated blankly. 
" What's he gone there for ? How are we going to get 
on without him in the business?" 

My partner laughed grimly and shrugged his well- 
tailored shoulders. 

" There isn't any business ! " he remarked. 

I looked at him stupidly. 

"How do you mean — no business?" I repeated in- 
credulously. 

"Just exactly that — no business at all!" he an- 
swered. "Bonds are dead! Everybody is trying to 
sell 'em, and there aren't any buyers. We haven't 
paid our expenses for the last six months. There's 
nothing doing here. So far as business is concerned, 
you might have stayed away forever. We don't need 
Morris; we don't need any office force. But we can't 
send 'em away; it wouldn't be decent. We've just 
got to make up our minds to it — that's all ! " 

I sat down, slowly trying to take it all in — to en- 
visage this new Wall Street. 

"Aren't there any profits?" I persisted. 

"Profits— hell!" he ejaculated. "Say, what's the 
matter with you ? "WTiere do you think you are, any- 
way? This business is costing us two thousand a 
month!" 

22 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

I got up and walked to the window. 

"Where did the money come from you've been 
sending me ? " I demanded. 

"Your share of our commissions on the Phoenicia 
merger," he rephed. "Look here, old top, it's time 
you began to wake up. I suppose we ought to have 
let you know how things were, but it seemed kinder 
to let you enjoy yourself." 

"To let me dream on," I retorted. "Well, let's hear 
the rest of it." 

"I suppose you know about the income tax?" 

"Not much." 

"Well, you're soaked three ways — the old 1916 tax, 
the new 1917 war tax, and the 8 per cent on earnings 
over six thousand dollars." 

"That last won't hurt us much, will it?" Then I 
burst out laughing. " Do you know. Lord — oh, Lord I 
— that I've just sent my wife and daughter up to take 
a suite at the Chatwold?" 

He chuckled. 

"There's the telephone," he said humorously, push- 
ing it toward me. 

"I think I need your help, old man," I replied. 
"Just sit down here with me — will you? — and figure 
out what's left." 

Lord opened a drawer and pulled out a prmted 
sheet covered with a complicated table of figures. I 
told him the returns from my private capital, and 

23 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

after a comparatively brief calculation he informed 
me that my income tax would amount to $3,713.09. 
I never knew how he got the nine cents. Anyhow, it 
really didn't matter much. I took the sheet of pad 
paper on which he had been writing and studied it 
attentively, with mingled feelings. Then I lifted my 
pencil and poised it in my hand. 

"What have our yearly profits averaged for the last 
five years — ^yours and mine ? " I asked. 

"Twelve thousand apiece," he answered at once. 

"Well, I've spent every cent of it; so have you. 
Add twelve thousand to three thousand and seven 
hundred" — I did it — "and you get fifteen thousand 
seven hundred. That's what this blooming old war 
has done to me already! It's cut my income over 
fifteen thousand dollars." 

"It's done the same to me," said he. 

"What are you going to do?" I demanded. 

It didn't seem possible. I was almost convinced 
there must be some trick in the figures — a statistical 
joke. 

"Do? Same as you will — cut down expenses.'* 

"Fifteen thousand dollars? I can't!" 

Of course I couldn't ! I had been living right up to 
the top notch on the theory that my income would, if 
anything, have a slight normal increase year by year. 
I had my principal, of course; but I had been brought 
up to view the spending of principal — of invested 

24 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

capital — as hardly less than a crime. Still, under the 
circumstances — Yet, to sell securities meant tak- 
ing a loss of from twenty to forty points. There wasn't 
much fun in selling an investment security, in order 
to raise ten thousand dollars, at a cash loss of four 
thousand. 

"You've got to do it, old man!" Lord said, per- 
ceiving what was going on inside my head. " We can't 
dispose of our firm securities at these prices — we've 
had to mark 'em down an average of thirty points — 
and you can't sell yours. You've simply got to change 
your mode of living. Everybody's doing it. You'll 
be in excellent company. After all, it's our contribu- 
tion to the war ! I don't mind so much. It's nothing 
to freezing in the trenches. We can't be stingy with 
our dollars when other fellows are giving their lives, 
can we ? " 

"You're right,'* I agreed. "But if you can spare 
me I guess I'll hike along up-town. My wife might 
buy a fur coat or something ! " 

My pet stenographer. Miss Peterson, who, in spite 
of her halo of bronze-colored hair, is the most efficient 
young woman I have ever had the good fortune to 
meet, had always attended to my personal accounts; 
so well, in fact, that I had rarely given them any at- 
tention. Now I rang for her and asked her to make 
me out an itemized statement setting forth my 
average yearly expenditures for the past five years. 

25 



THE EARTHQUAKE 



To my surprise I discovered that she had already 
done so. 

"Mr. Morris and Mr. Lord both had to go over 
their accounts, so I assumed that you would probably 
wish to," she said with a smile. 

I stuffed the envelope into my pocket without dar- 
ing to look at it, and moved toward the door. 

" I'll be down as usual in the morning," I said to 
Lord. 

"Not necessary at all!" he retorted. "I advise 
you to stay up-town and take an account of stock. I 
won't expect you until next Monday; and you needn't 
show up then if there's anything you'd rather do." 

I started to take a taxi, recoiled, and descended to 
the Subway. While shooting up-town T surrepti- 
tiously examined Miss Peterson's schedule: 



1912 $39,390.55 

1913 40,834.77 

1914 40,992.80 



1915 $41,245.01 

1916 43,871.16 

1917 (9 mos.)... 39,656.10 



These totals were neatly itemized under various 
general headings — such as Rent, Taxes, Supplies, 
Motor, Mrs. Stanton, Servants, Travel, Charity, Miss 
Margery, Repairs, Furnishings, Medical, Light and 
Heat, and so on. It made me almost sick to look at 
the thing. It was preposterous ! 

"1916— Mr. Stanton~$3,714.27," for instance! 
How on earth could I have spent any such sum on 

26 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

myself? Mentally I reviewed my disbursements of 
the preceding year. Yes; I had joined the Riding 
Club at an expense, including the initiation fee, of 
$400, and I had ordered my usual number of over- 
coats and suits at an average of $90 each. My club 
dues had come to $670 and my club bills to $443.20. 
There were also sundry items camouflaged on my 
stubs under the mystic symbol of "Pk," which stood 
for poker losses. The amount of these shall remain 
undisclosed for the sake of posterity. On the whole, 
the $3,714.27 was pretty well explained. 

I found my wife lunching in the sunlit private suite 
at the Chatwold she had engaged to tide us over tem- 
porarily until she could secure her staff of servants. 

"Sit down," she said. "The waiter will be back 
presently. What will you have — poulet en casserole 
or salmis of Long Island duckling? The salade 
russe is delicious." 

"I'll have a roast-beef sandwich and a cup of 
coffee," I answered shortly. "Look here, Helen; just 
make the most of that poulet en casserole. I hate to 
break it to you — but this is no place for us !" 

"Why, John!" she exclaimed. "What is the mat- 
ter ? Have we lost money ? " 

"Don't you know that we are at war?'* 

"Of course! What are you going to do — buy 
Liberty Bonds?" 

I laughed a hollow laugh. 
27 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"No ! We're busted — that is, we're fifteen thousand 
dollars a year poorer than when we left New York; and 
that comes pretty close to bustmg us — living as we do." 

She looked at me wearily. She seemed very tired. 
I had expected some sort of outburst, but nothing 
of the sort occurred. 

"How much have we got left?" she inquired vaguely 
after a pause. 

"Oh, somethmg over twenty-five thousand dollars 
a year," I answered. 

I confess I had looked forward to this disclosure 
with apprehension verging on panic. I was still ex- 
actly as much in love with Helen as the day she had 
become my wife; we were perhaps the happiest married 
couple I knew. The only thing that ever came be- 
tween us, that in any way detracted from our complete 
sympathy, was that sometimes I felt that she expended 
her intellect upon objects unworthy of her. These 
objects were chiefly concerned with the material com- 
fort of her existence — the polish on the machinery of 
her life. 

It seemed to me that the polish had taken on for 
her a greater importance than the machinery. She 
was preoccupied with appearances. Everything in the 
house always had to look exactly as if it were new. 
There were always painters and upholsterers about, 
and my bills for repairs never were less than a 
thousand dollars a year. Our house was a pattern 

28 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

of luxury and taste. Our servants were models of 
dexterity and neatness. Our cooks were inevitably 
mistresses of the culinary art. Our life ran as if 
on ball bearings, without a sound, without a hitch. 
Seven people could have their breakfasts in bed with- 
out causing the slightest disarrangement in our me- 
nage. Our friends said Helen was a wonderful house- 
keeper. I thought she was just a wonderful little 
spender. 

Our automobile was exquisite. Rene always looked 
as if he had just stepped out of a show-case, and the 
motor was done over every year. Helen didn't seem 
to have any time for the things she and I had regarded 
as important when we were engaged. I regarded her 
as ease-loving — trifling, superficial. 

I see now that I was wrong — at least to the extent 
of thinking that it was Helen's real character to be 
like that. It was rather that she had simply let her- 
self go with the current and taken non-essentials seri- 
ously because the rest of her friends did so. Her 
trouble was not individual; it was endemic. And it 
was allied to ophthalmia. So I had anticipated tears, 
if not a scene, when she should learn our situation. 
She looked a little worried, it is true; but she did not 
protest. 

"I suppose it will mean giving up the motor — and 
our house ? " 

I nodded. 

29 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"It does seem too bad to have to lose Rene," she 
murmured. "And the car ran too beautifully this 
morning!" she added wistfully. "However, I should 
think anybody ought to be able to get along on twenty- 
five thousand dollars a year in war time. I want to 
live as well as I can, but I don't want to live any better. 
If that's all we've got we'll have to manage. I'm sorry 
for Margery, though." 

I had been thinking of Margery myself. She was 
in every way a charming girl, and her mother had for 
years looked forward to bringing her out in society 
with the customary New York display. Poor Mar- 
gery ! There would be mighty little chance for mag- 
nificence on our reduced income. 

At that precise moment, however, I was not think- 
ing of Margery, but of my supposedly ease-loving 
wife. In place of making an indignant outburst, 
she sat there quite calmly, agreeing without a mo- 
ment's hesitation to readjust her entire scale of life. 
Poor dear! I thought. She didn't know what it was 
going to involve. What real sacrifices she would be 
called upon to make, habituated as she was to luxury ! 
But, whether she knew or not, she was a brave woman 
and I admired her as I never had before. 

"Darling!" I exclaimed, putting my arm about 
her, for the waiter had not returned. "You're a real 
little brick — ^the real stuff ! I didn't care for myself — 
only for you.'* 

30 



MYSELF— JOHxN STANTON 

She suddenly threw her arms about my neck and 
burst into tears. 

"Oh, John !" she sobbed. "I don't care how I live. 
We started on nothing and we never have been hap- 
pier than we were in our first little flat; but — I didn't 
tell you before — I didn't want to until you'd had your 
lunch! — but — Oh, John, I'm frightened to death 
about Jack!" 

"Why?" I choked, startled at her tone. "What 
about Jack ? " 

She picked up a newspaper that was lying beside 
her and pointed to an item on the back sheet; then 
turned away her head. 

"Gallant th to sail for France next week," I 

read through blurred eyes. "So rapid has been the 
improvement in the condition and training of the 

th Regiment, stationed at Fort that it is 

now authoritatively announced that it will break 
camp within a few days and sail within the week 
for the other side, where the men will receive in- 
struction in the field from specially detailed French 
army oflBcers in the use of trench-bombs, raiding, 
etc. 

"Among the sons of well-known New Yorkers upon 
the staff are Lieutenant Ogden Baker, son of Maxwell 
Baker, of Park Avenue; Lieutenant John Stanton, 
Junior " 

For a moment the motes in the sunlight swam in 
31 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

dizzying circles and I grasped the table to steady my- 
self. Jack ! Jack going ? 

"Oh, Helen!" I cried, wholly unnerved. "He 
can't go! He's too young. My God, it never oc- 
curred to me! Why, he's only a boy! I'll go to 
Washington — see Wilson. It would be a crime I 
I " 

I sank down at the table and put my face in my 
hands. Then I heard my wife's voice saying: 

"John, dear, it's all right — it's simply splendid I 
Of course it's a surprise; but you — ^j^ou wouldn't have 
it otherwise ! It's where he ought to be I We should 
be the proudest people in New York. Our boy is 
going among the very first to fight to make the world 
safe for democracy, for Christian ideals; so that there 
never can be such an aw^ul, awful war again; and — 
and — and — Oh, John ! John! I can't bear it ! " 

She threw herself down beside me and held me 
tight. We sat there clinging to each other for some 
time. Then Helen raised her head and wiped her 
eyes. 

"John, dear," she said, "let's go up to the house. 
I'll leave word for Margery at the office. I can't 
think in this place. I want to have my own things 
round me — my own books and pictures and furniture 
— not all this gilt and plush ! I don't feel as if I were 
all here — at this hotel. I'm sure we can talk thmgs 
over better there than in this horrible suite!" 

32 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

I paid my bill to the dapper young gentleman at 
the hotel office, who seemed rather surprised at our 
sudden change of plans and who "trusted that every- 
thing had been satisfactory"; stated that I would 
send for my baggage that evening, helped Helen into 
a taxi, and started for Seventy-second Street. It was 
a lovely afternoon, sunlight everywhere, children play- 
ing with their nurses in Park Avenue, the streets 
clean and quiet; nothing seemed changed since we 
had gone away. As we turned into our o^vn block 
Helen leaned out of the window of the taxi and looked 
up at the house. 

"How nice!" she exclaimed. "Some one has hung 
out a big American flag ! It must have been Henry I " 

Sure enough, there over our white Colonial doorway, 
the pole suspended from the iron grill of the library 
windows, curling and uncurling in the soft afternoon 
breeze, floated the Stars and Stripes. 

"Splendid!" I answered. "It was bully of your 
brother to do that." 

Then my eye caught another and smaller flag be- 
neath — a red flag enclosing an oblong field of white 
upon which was a single star of blue. 

"Hello!" I cried. "What do you suppose that is? 
Do you see that other flag, Helen?" 

"Why, yes!" she answered curiously. "I wonder 
what it can mean!" 

The decrepit taxi-driver touched his hat. 
33 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"Pardon me, ma'am," he said. "That blue star 
means that some one from this house has gone to the 
front. God bless him, whoever he is!" 

We looked at each other in silence. 

"God bless him," I repeated, though my lips quiv- 
ered, " whoever he is I " 

How familiar, yet how strange, seemed the silent 
interior of our house, with its shrouded furniture, its 
shadowy corners, its drawn curtains. For the first 
time I realized what it meant to me — to Helen — to 
all of us. There was the room where Margery had 
been born. There was Jack's half workshop, half 
stateroom, with that yellow Teddy-bear he had never 
quite brought himself to relinquish, sitting astride 
the football he had forced across the St. Mark's goal- 
line for a victory for Groton. 

I closed the door quickly lest Helen should see it. 
Yet I felt that it was best that we should give up our 
home; best to surrender it to the unsympathetic hands 
of strangers than not to do our bit in teaching the 
rest of the nation the lesson of economy. At any price 
— ^however seemingly extravagant — a hotel would be 
cheaper than housekeeping. 

"Well," I said finally when, after our inspection, 
we had gone down-stairs into the library and thrown 
open the windows to the afternoon sun, "it's tough, 
but we'll have to give it up I" 

"Isn't there anything else we could do first?" 
34 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

asked my wife. "I would do almost anything rather 
than lose my home I" 

"The only way to really save any substantial sum 
of money is to make a radical change in our mode of 
life," I answered. "You would find it almost im- 
possible to give up living here as you have always 
lived. Let's do the thing right and start differently." 

Helen made no further protest, except to give a 
little sigh as she glanced at the portraits of my father 
and mother, which hung on either side of the fireplace. 

"All right, dear," she agreed. "If we must, that 
is all there is to it." 

There was, however, one factor in the situation 
upon which it appeared that we had not sufficiently 
reckoned. It had never occurred to me that we should 
have any difficulty about leasing our house if we 
cared to do so; but a brief colloquy over the tele- 
phone with our real-estate agent was enough to 'satisfy 
me that it would be practically impossible for us to 
find a tenant who would be willing to pay enough rent 
to enable us either to take an apartment or go to a 
hotel and effect any real saving. Practically every 
house in New York was for rent, he said; in fact, there 
were five other houses in our own block on the mar- 
ket. 

Everybody had gone to Washmgton, or was go- 
ing to spend the winter in the country; he mentioned 
several of our friends. People were cutting down on 

35 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

every hand. We might get a tenant at about half 
what our house might normally be expected to bring; 
but otherwise he could not give us much encourage- 
ment. The renting market had started out well; but 
lately there had been a bad slump. It was obvious 
that, unless we practically gave our house away, we 
should have either to close it up or live in it ourselves. 

We considered the former course first. By going 
to a hotel we should save light, heat, repairs, various 
maintenance charges, and servants' wages. We should 
also not have to run our kitchen. We had previously 
kept ten servants. It would be much cheaper for the 
three of us and our maid to board at a hotel — say, the 
Chatwold. 

I telephoned to my dapper young friend there and 
inquired what apartments were still available for the 
winter. He replied that there was one four-room suite 
left — ^but only one — which for a term of six months he 
would let me — "me" — have for nine hundred and 
seventy-five dollars a month, a substantial conces- 
sion from ruling rates ! I thanked him and hung up. 
We figured out that, on the basis of the data in hand, 
it would cost the three of us — with Helen's maid — on a 
conservative estimate, not a cent less than fifteen 
hundred dollars a month to live at the Chatwold. 
For eight months that would amount to twelve 
thousand dollars — ^practically as much as it would 
cost us to run our house. 

36 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

We telephoned to many of the other hotels; but 
the best we could do was four hundred and fifty dol- 
lars a month, with an estunated dining-room charge 
of at least four hundred and fifty dollars more. This 
last was in an excellent hotel on a side street, but where 
we knew the rooms were small, rather dark, and dis- 
tinctly unattractive. Nevertheless, to go there for 
the winter, even if we sacrificed our home, would be 
to effect a substantial saving. To me it seemed the 
most sensible thing to do, and I said so. But Helen 
answered : 

"John, I don't want to go to a hotel. I want the 
quiet and order and privacy of my own home. I 
want my own family life. We've lived here twenty 
years, and this house — our things — are all part of us. 
It's the physical centre of our lives — whatever they 
are. I don't want Margery in a hotel; it's far better 
for her to stay here, where she can receive her friends 
quietly, instead of giving them tea in front of a string 
band." 

"I agree with you," I replied patiently. "Of 
course I'd rather live here. But what are we going 
to do if we can't afford it?" 

Then it was that Helen showed the rare and pene- 
trating quality of mind which had compelled my ad- 
miration so often in her earlier years and which lat- 
terly had seemed to be dormant. 

"John," she retorted eagerly, "do you know what 
37 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

you are urging me to do ? You are proposing that we 
should run away — try to escape from our responsibil- 
ities, from the duty to economize which the war has 
forced upon us. I know it's all on my account. You 
think Fm a slave to comfort. Well, perhaps I have 
been. Maybe the war will liberate a lot of people. 
We have suddenly lost over a third of our income; 
but, even so, our income is about four times what my 
father and mother lived on right here in New York. 
I've always known that we — that everybody — spent 
too much money; but it's human nature to want to 
live the way one's friends live. 

"Now we can't any longer. We've got to live on 
what we've got. If we're obliged to save fifteen thou- 
sand dollars, let's save it — not rush off to a hotel, to 
even greater extravagance. There's no calamity — no 
sorrow — no sickness that doesn't bring some good 
with it. If we ought to change our mode of life, let's 
change it — and be glad of the chance. If I run off to 
a hotel, where all I shall have to do, if I want any- 
thing, is to press a button; if I make you give up 
your home for the sake of my own convenience; if I 
turn coward when all the world is full of courage — 
why, John, I shan't be able to look at myself in the 
glass I" 

I don't think I ever loved Helen more than at that 
moment; and if she had realized what her words 
meant to me she would have felt repaid a thousand 

38 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

times for any future sacrifices. For several years I 
had felt uneasy at the monetary cost of an existence 
that not only left us nothing to spend upon many 
things I should greatly have enjoyed — European 
travel, for instance — but rendered our contributions 
to charity negligible. 

I had really been poor on forty thousand dollars a 
year, frequently denying myself things that men with 
half my income regarded as matters of course. Taxi- 
cabs, for instance. My New England training had 
never enabled me to expend on the mere maintenance 
of our household the huge sum it required with any 
degree of complacence, for I knew in my heart that we 
were making an end of what should have been the 
means to an end. Our sole object in life had come 
to be ease of living. And, even so, though we had 
made a science of luxury we had not achieved our 
purpose. 

The machinery of existence had been more im- 
portant than existence itself. The servants had out- 
numbered the family three to one. Employed to 
reduce responsibility — that was why we had so many 
maids, chambermaids, parlor-maids, kitchen-maids, 
and laundresses — the irony of the situation lay in the 
fact that, instead of eliminating responsibility, all 
these people only added to it. The more "help" we 
had to work for us, the less help they were and the 
greater the effort required to superintend their inac- 

39 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

tivities. Instead of paying servants in order to keep 
house, we kept house in order to pay servants to live 
with us. 

Moreover, houses, horses, yachts, motors — all de- 
manded constant attention; but unfortunately it was 
an attention that required no physical exertion. We 
had ceased absolutely to do anything for ourselves. 
Our wives grew fat from their everlasting motor- 
ing. We — the supposed workers — were borne to 
and from business — miles — in luxurious limousines. 
Even when we went out to play golf, we were car- 
ried. In our own homes we went up and down in 
elevators. 

None of us ever put foot in a street-car or the Sub- 
way. If we went to dinner in the next block we sent 
for Rene and the automobile. We were soft — ^perhaps 
even worse ! I knew it; and now — thank heaven ! — 
I knew that Helen knew it. Yet we never should have 
thought of changing the system if it had not been 
for the war. Should we change ? Could we change ? 
Wouldn't the sacrifice be too great ? Fifteen thousand 
dollars ! 

"You're all right, Helen!" I exclaimed, shoving 
the cigar-box to one side and lighting a pipe. "Let's 
see if we can do it ! " 

I pulled Miss Peterson's expense sheet from my 
pocket and sat down beside her. 

"Do it? Of course we can do it! Why,i Jolm, 
40 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

imagine not being able to get along on twenty-five 
thousand dollars a year ! " 

She took the sheet from my hand and began going 
over it, item by item. Naturally, we could not do 
anything about our real-estate and water taxes, life 
and fire insurance premiums. These we passed by. 
But we had always taken a house on Long Island for 
the summer at an approximate rental of from twenty- 
five hundred to thirty-five hundred dollars; and this 
we decided we could cut to fifteen hundred — or stay in 
town. My own expenses I unhesitatingly cut to 
twelve hundred dollars, and Helen surprised me by 
saying that she could do quite beautifully on two 
thousand dollars. "Why should I want any new 
clothes this winter?" she asked. 

Margery would have to get along on one thousand 
dollars instead of her accustomed two thousand. 
Jack — I tried to dodge his name, but Helen insisted 
on jerking me bravely back — Jack would cost us prac- 
tically nothing. We decided to cut out the motor for 
the seven months in the city — a saving of at least two 
thousand dollars; to sell our opera tickets — two hun- 
dred and seventy-six dollars; to buy no new furnish- 
ings for the house, keep no men servants, reduce the 
number of maids, and put the kitchen on a war basis. 

For what it is worth, here is how we proposed to 
save on ten items our fifteen thousand seven hundred 
dollars: 

41 



THE EARTHQUAKE 



Actual 

average 

per year 

for past 

five 

years 



Pro- 
posed 
allow-' 
ance for 
1918 



Estimated 
saving 



John Stanton — personal. . 
Helen Stanton — personal. 

Margery Stanton 

John Stanton, Junior 

Summer cottage 

Opera, theatre, and so on. 

Servants 

Supplies 

Automobile 

Short trips, and so on, . . . 

Total saving 



$2,000 
3,500 
2,000 
2,000 
3,000 

500 
5,200 
8,500 
4,300 

500 



$1,200 
2,000 
1,000 



1,500 
100 
3,500 
4,250 
2,300 



1,500 
1,000 
2,000 
1,500 

400 
1,700 
4,250 
2,000 

500 



$15,650 



After all, what did giving up the motor for the 
winter really mean to me? — although it cost me not 
a cent less than twelve dollars a day; or my vacuous- 
faced English butler and footman — why were they 
not in Flanders? — or the few clubs on Fifth Avenue, 
whose portals I rarely entered; or my seats at the 
opera — heretofore often occupied by indigent female 
relatives; or the elaborate cuisine we had previously 
been accustomed to maintain chiefly for the gastro- 
nomical entertainment of the ten voracious men and 
maid servants who had hitherto made our house 
their home, their restaurant, and their club? 

In reality, nothing at all. I should not even be in- 
convenienced by any of these reductions. In point of 
fact, I could surrender, with entire equanimity, the 

42 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

idea of having a cottage at the seaside, since I was 
infinitely more contented in my own home, and com- 
muting tired me to death. There was not an item on 
our revised budget that needed to be a penny larger 
for our entire comfort. And yet we should save over 
fifteen thousand dollars a year and be living quite 
within my income — war-taxes included. 

It set me thinking. I dare say it set Helen think- 
ing, too. What did our previous expenditure of that 
fifteen thousand dollars represent? Our dependence 
on a conventional luxury that was really not luxury at 
all, but an impediment to freedom ! It was the price 
we had paid simply to live like our friends; to be 
thought well off and successful. Yet we were ill off. 
We had ceased to know the verve that comes only 
from constant physical activity; we had lost spring, 
bodily and mental; our moral and physical attack; 
our ability to handle ourselves — in a word, our effi- 
ciency. We had lost the mastery of our own souls at 
a cost of fifteen thousand dollars a year. 

Along with this I experienced the somewhat less 
meritorious reflection that if I could get along on 
fifteen thousand dollars less when my earning capacity 
was entirely cut off, I should achieve wealth when 
that income should be restored. Should I ever again 
be satisfied to pay fifteen thousand dollars a year just 
to oil the machinery of my existence ? Why, what 

43 



THE EARTHQUAKE \ 

could I not do for myself and for others with such a \ 

sum of money ? Was I, in fact, giving up anything ? '. 

To this extent the war had proved a blessing instead ; 

of a burden. I was making no real sacrifice. i 

Through the smoke wreaths rising from my pipe : 
my eye caught in the window the gentle swaying of 

the red flag with its single blue star. I turned to find s 

Helen was gazing at it also. \ 

"John," she said slowly, "I've been thinking that, j 
after all, we're not going to do enough. We've only | 
been planning how to live on our income. I read to- 
day that there was danger the Liberty Loan might I 
not be fully subscribed. Think what it would mean ; 
if we sent hundreds of thousands of our young men | 
over to fight and didn't give them the proper backing I | 
It would be terrible ! We ought to subscribe to the ■ 
loan, whether we have the money or not; no matter \ 
whether we see our way clear to do it or not. Every- ' 
body ought to save every cent and lend it to the gov- j 
ernment. Don't you think we ought to subscribe for : 
at least twenty thousand dollars ? " i 

"If you tried to save twenty thousand dollars 

more," I retorted, "you would have to go and live in | 
a boarding-house on a side street! I don't suppose 
we shall have to save it, though. We can sell some 
securities and lend Uncle Sam the money. We'll have 
to take quite a loss." 

"I don't mind !" she answered. "Nothing is really 
44 



MYSELF— JOHN STANTON 

a sacrljSce that doesn't hurt. Next to wearing a uni- 
form, I guess the proudest badge of honor any of us 
can have is going to be a shabby suit of clothes." 

We sat there without saying anything more until 
the room fell into shadow and the street-lamp across 
the way was lighted. I was just going to suggest 
that we go out to dinner somewhere when the front 
door-bell rang sharply. 

Thinking it might be a telegram, I went down- 
stairs and opened the door. Outside stood a tall fig- 
ure in khaki. Messenger-boys did not dress like that 
now — did they? Then I felt myself being hugged 
violently and heard Jack's voice shouting: 

"Hello, dad! It's ripping to have you back again I 
How's mother? And isn't it great that the regiment 
sails week after next ! " 



45 



II 

MY HOUSEHOLD 

Helen, Margery, and I had our breakfast next 
morning of coffee and rolls served in the sunny win- 
dow of the sitting-room by Mrs. Gavin, our caretaker. 
During the preceding evening, while Jack had been 
with us, we had thought of nothing but the hideous 
gap his pending departure for France would make 
in our family circle; but now that he had gone back 
to camp we had time to face the concrete problems 
the war had evolved for us. 

It had been the first night we had spent in our own 
home for nearly a year, and this was the dawn of a 
new sort of existence. Heretofore we had taken no 
thought of the morrow or, for that matter, of to-day. 
When we opened the house in the autumn we simply 
telegraphed to a firm of professional house-cleaners to 
come with their vacuum tubes, their rotary sweepers, 
their acids and varnishes, and get the place ready — 
usually at a cost of about three hundred dollars. 
Then we sent on ahead five or six servants, including 
the cook, to prepare the way, and arrived, in due 
course, in a perfectly ordered and well-running estab- 
lishment. 

46 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

When we returned from six weeks in Paris or Lon- 
don our motor met us at the dock, I found my dress 
clothes laid out in their customary place, and dinner 
was served by the butler and the second man just as 
if we had not been away at all. But now there was 
to be no butler and no second man. Our resolution 
taken the afternoon before was to be put to the test. 
Would Helen be able to manage it? Or, if she could 
manage it, could she stand it? However, I saw no 
weakening in her face as I lit my cigarette and glanced 
at her across the table. 

"You had better send for Rene," she said, smiling. 
"The sooner you tell him he must go the better. I'm 
going down-town to engage a cook." 

In spite of Helen's cheerfulness I realized what 
giving up her motor would mean to her; how phys- 
ically dependent upon it she had become. I hated the 
idea of my wife hanging on to a strap in the street-cars 
while the boors in the neighboring seats ignored her 
sex. Besides, how could Margery, with her many 
social engagements, possibly manage to get along 
without it? And if we lost the peerless Rene, could 
we ever find another treasure like him ? No; I would 
find some other and less drastic economy ! 

"Helen," I said, "I've been thinking it over, and I 
feel that it would be bad business for us to give up 
Rene. We couldn't replace him. Probably we can 

cut down on something else that " 

47 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

But Helen had risen to her feet with a gesture of 
finality. 

"No, John," she interrupted; "that has been de- 
cided, once and for all. It's a matter of conscience. I 
shall not keep the car this winter." 

"Anyhow," I urged feebly, "you might as well run 
it for a few days while you are getting settled — say, 
for a week. It seems foolish not to, you know, when 
it's standing right there round the corner in the garage." 

She shook her head. 

"I don't want to begin using the motor. I don't 
trust myself. If I once started I mightn't want to 
give it up. Let me have ten cents for the bus, please ! " 

"You're a brave woman, Helen!" I answered. 
"Well, here's your dime!" 

"You'll need a chore man, daddy," volunteered my 
daughter as my wife drew on her gloves. "The house 
is like an ice-chest." 

" Didn't we have one — an Italian ? " I inquired. 

"Yes," answered Helen. "I think Mrs. Gavin can 
find him for you. If you can't get hold of him you 
might start a fire in the furnace yourself." 

I said nothing. Why not ? If Helen could go down- 
town in the bus, surely I ought to be able to start a 
fire ! But my heart was filled with more than mere 
misgivings. 

"Well, what is Margery going to do?" I inquired 
lightly. "What's her particular bit?" 

48 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

"I think Margery had better go over the linen and 
china and see if there is any of it left," replied her 
mother. "After that she can collaborate with Mrs. 
Gavin in getting lunch." 

I bade my wife farewell at the front door and, hav- 
ing turned Margery loose among the china, sought the 
whereabouts of our chore man. But Mrs. Gavin had 
not seen Angelo that morning and was ignorant of 
his place of abode. 

We had occupied our house for nearly twenty years, 
but only once before did I recall having descended to 
the lower regions presided over by that being so 
singularly misnamed the useful man. At any rate, I 
had always looked upon him as anything but useful — 
a fiction, a frill, a foolish concession to the unwill- 
ingness of the modern domestic to do any real 
work. 

"Now," said I to myself, with a growing sense of 
virtue, of mastery of my own soul, "we'll begin to go 
at things in the right way — thoroughly, from the 
ground up." 

The cellar stairs were dark and I had to reascend to 
the kitchen to procure a candle. 

"You'll spoil yer beautiful clothes," warned the 
solicitous Mrs. Gavin. "You'll get ashes all over 
yerself !" 

"You don't know me!" I retorted. "It's no trick 
to make a fire I Why, when I was a boy I always — " 

49 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

But she had vanished into the mysterious distances 
of the laundry. 

Our cellar seemed curiously unfamiliar as I stood 
with the candle elevated above my head, and muffled 
noises from the street outside gave me the feeling of 
being immersed in an Egyptian tomb — like a helpless 
Rhadames without his Aida. A multitude of pipes of 
every size and crookedness writhed round a compli- 
cated apparatus which I felt reasonably confident was 
the furnace. Dust lay thick everywhere and scattered 
pieces of coal endangered my equilibrium at every step. 

Timidly I opened one of the doors. It was choked 
with ashes and cinders. Curse the dago I I must 
clean out the grate before I could start the fire. I 
shall not describe the agonizing scene that followed, 
but at the end of a gruelling half-hour, reeking with 
sweat, and my hair, mouth, and eyes filled with dust, 
I exultantly laid in the furnace a lot of newspapers 
and kindlmg and put on a shovel or two of coal as a 
starter. I then discovered that I had no matches; 
and as it did not occur to me to make use of the candle, 
which I had stuck on the coal-bin, I was obliged to 
ascend to the kitchen again. 

Mrs. Gavin controlled her features with difficulty. 

"Have you turned on the water, Mr. Stanton?'* 
she asked innocently. "You know it's a hot-water 
furnace. I've fixed the radiators up-stairs, already, 
for you." 

50 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

I hadn't known it was a hot-water furnace. If it 
had not been for that missing match I might have 
burned the bottom oflF the boiler or blown the whole 
thing through the roof ! 

"Of course I shall turn on the water!" I replied 
haughtily, receiving the match-box. "What did you 
suppose I would do?" 

"There's an indicator, too," she continued vaguely. 

"Oh, yes, of course — an indicator," I repeated help- 
lessly. 

Down in the darkness among the pipes I discovered 
at least five different handles by which I thought the 
water might be let into the furnace. One by one I 
turned them, without result. Apparently there wasn't 
any water. Perhaps it wasn't a hot-water furnace 
after all I Then I found a curious little valve, and on 
moving it received an answering gurgle, followed by a 
rush. Water ! It was like finding it in the Sahara I 

With the fast-dying candle I now searched for the 
indicator. I did not know what it was supposed to 
indicate, but I dared not disregard it. Yes; there it 
was, right on top of the furnace. Lifting the candle, 
I perceived that it had two hands — a red one and a 
black one. The red one pointed through the accumu- 
lated dust of ages to the number 100, while the black 
one apparently had its affections permanently affixed 
upon zero. 

Meantime the water continued to run. Where was 
51 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

it running to? A furnace, like a human being, must 
have a limit to its capacity. I began to be worried. 
Suppose the water, having flooded all the hidden veins 
and arteries of the furnace mechanism, were now leap- 
ing gayly over the top of some tank or basin, to come 
presently pouring down the stairs, bearing Mrs. Gavin 
along with it, like a female Charlie Chaplin. Why had 
I ever tried to start the furnace, anyway ? I reversed 
the handle of the valve. 

I was now just about where I had started, after the 
lapse of an hour. Then I said to myself: 

"Stanton, you have lived in this house twenty 
years. This furnace has kept you lukewarm in winter 
and made you swelter in spring and autumn. You 
would have suffered — perhaps died — without it. You 
need it in your business. You cannot economize on 
it without reckless extravagance in doctors. It is the 
axis of your domestic sphere. Either you or it 
must be master here ! This is a test of character. 
Light that fire — or be forever disgraced in your own 
eyes and those of Mrs. Gavin." 

Meantime that furnace was sitting there with its 
mouth wide open and its tongue in its cheek. I glared 
back at it resentfully. The indicator was still im- 
mutable. Then suddenly it dawned upon me that the 
water had run out of the furnace as fast as it had run 
in. I must prevent it, somehow. Down on my hands 
and knees I went until I found another handle, back 

52 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

of the damper. It yielded to my touch. Again I 
turned on the water. A clucking sound became au- 
dible. Something was happening to the indicator I 
Aha I The black arrow had moved. Cluck-cluck! 
It was jumping ahead like a taximeter! I leaped 
upon the valve and shut off the water. At last ! 

My hand trembled as I closed the furnace-door and 
lit the fire. Was it fatigue, was it excitement, or was 
it spiritual exaltation? I believe that it was the last. 
Carefully adjusting draft and damper, I climbed the 
stairs to the kitchen. I had the feeling of being a real 
man. I was the boss — the owner — of that furnace. 
No one could give me any back talk about furnaces — 
hot- water or otherwise — again ! No chore man could 
put anything across on me. 

Mrs. Gavin seemed to have gone out, but as I 
emerged from the shadows of the passage I came face 
to face with an enraged and malevolent Italian — 
Angelo. 

"Who you feir dat getta my job?" 

I have described my encounter with the furnace — 
accurate in every detail — in order that the reader may 
fully appreciate the parlous state of my ignorance of 
the physical mechanism of my own life. I had been 
utterly helpless in my own house. If anything, no 
matter how trifling, went wrong with the gas, elec- 
tricity, plumbing, heating, or elevator I had to tell 

53 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

the butler to send for a gas-fitter, plumber, steam- 
fitter, or electrician. 

Emerging from that cellar, I had to admit that An- 
gelo — like Gunga Din — was a better man than myself. 
I did not know how to turn the water on or off, or the 
gas and electricity, though the Commissioner of Gas, 
Water, and Electricity was an intimate friend of mine. 
I was ignorant of the whereabouts of the gas-meter 
and the electric-meter, and I did not even know whether 
I had a water-meter or not. I had no idea where the 
tank was — or if I had one. 

I had never asked the price of coal; how much was 
ordered; or how much, in fact, I got. I paid my bills 
without question. The coal man, the wood man, the 
iceman, the milkman, the butcher, the grocer, the 
baker, and even the dry-goods man, could have sent 
me in bills to any amount for undelivered goods, and I 
should have paid them cheerfully. 

My faith in the honesty of my fellows above 
Forty-second Street might not have been able to move 
mountains; but I am sure it was worth thousands — to 
somebody. Yet in business I watched with an' eagle 
eye the well-dressed gentlemen with whom I dealt 
and took nothing whatsoever on faith. As a business 
man I was from Missouri; as a householder in a great 
metropolis I was a simple-minded yokel. 

Down in my banking-office the people in my em- 
ploy obeyed me with a jump, and received the "sack" 

54 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

or the "hook" — whichever is the correct technical 
substantive — for the slightest incivility or carelessness. 
In my equally expensive and no less important estab- 
lishment up-town my men servants not infrequently 
indicated by the frigidity of their demeanor what they 
thought of me and my suggestions — I cannot refer to 
my remarks as orders — ^as to how they should spend 
their time. 

They had every other afternoon and evening out; 
they arrived at the house in the morning just in time 
to officiate at breakfast at nine o'clock; and their chief 
function seemed to be to stand in the front hall and 
hand me my hat and stick, after which they probably 
dawdled away the morning smoking in the pantry, 
reading the magazines, or glancmg through Burke's 
** Peerage." 

The female domestics, though better workers, were 
no less exacting than the men in regard to time off. 
When, on the occasion of our annual migration to 
Newport, they left the house in a body to go to the 
train, their numbers suggested a parade of the 
Daughters of the Revolution. A silent and ominous 
antagonism characterized their deportment. 

No one of my family ever entered the kitchen or 
exercised any authority there. The cook ordered all 
the meals. We did not give orders to her. We as- 
sumed a placating attitude, fearful, as it were, lest we 
might be discharged if we incurred her displeasure. 

55 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

As a man of financial affairs I was regarded as a suc- 
cess; as the head of a domestic household I was worse 
than a joke. And my wife, considering that the home 
is supposed to be woman's sphere, was as bad as or 
even worse than I was. 

Our house was run independently of us, not by us 
— and hardly for us. We were ignoramuses, totally 
unfit to assume the management of our own domestic 
economy, just as I had shown myself to be with re- 
gard to the furnace. Yet I had mastered it; and, 
if I had, there was hope that it might not be too late 
for us to assume the responsibilities of ordering our 
own meals and handling our own affairs. 

Since the day I wrestled with that furnace I have 
sometimes thought that the government to which I 
owed my allegiance was really no better prepared to 
cope with the practical possibilities involved in its 
being one of the family of nations than I was as a 
householder. If at any time a burglar had seen fit to 
enter my home he could have held me up at the point 
of his gun and relieved me of my valuables without 
the possibility of resistance. I knew that New York 
had its quota of burglars, but I had no burglar-alarm, 
no firearms, and no watchman. If the burglar had 
come, and I had survived his visit, next day I should 
have hired a private patrolman and purchased a re- 
volver; but the burglar would have had things all 
his own way for the time being. Like myself, Uncle 

56 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

Sam had been quite content to be a good business 
man, and in his family life had been entirely too 
easy-going. 

My gymnastics in the cellar necessitated changing 
my clothes and a thorough washing up; so it was 
nearly lunch-time before I could send for Rene. For 
eight years he had been a family institution. He had 
taken Margery to school in the morning and returned 
for her at one; had borne me down-town to my office 
at nine- thirty and called for me at five; had carried 
Helen out to luncheon and on her constant shopping 
excursions; and in the evening had transported us to 
the theatre, to the opera, or to dinner. The little car 
was kept rolling all the time. None of us set foot on 
the asphalt if we could help it, and meantime we had 
all gained substantially in weight — ^particularly my 
wife. 

"Ren6/' I said apologetically, "I have some bad 
news for you. Mrs. Stanton and I have decided that 
we ought not to keep the motor this winter. We have 
got to make some sacrifices, and we feel that the car 
is such an expense we shall have to let you go." 

I was very sorry to lose our lame chauffeur. We 
were all devoted to him, and for that reason had found 
him another place and paid him half-wages during 
our absence. But though I knew my friend, by 
whom he had been employed, to be anxious to retain 
his services, I was afraid Rene would show some 

57 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

resentment. He merely smUed regretfully and 
touched his cap, however. 

"I understand, m'sieur," he answered in a sym- 
pathetic tone. "I am sorry, of course. But when all 
the world has gone mad, que voulez-vousf We must all 
suffer — eh? We must all make our little sacrifices. 
And, vraiment, m'sieur, you do not need a car in the 
city. There are very many taxis. By and by, when 
the war is over, I shall come back to m'sieur — ^per- 
haps." 

"I hope so, Rene," I replied, touched by his man- 
ner. "But none of us can tell. We may never have 
our car again. Here is the check for your half-wages." 

I held out the slip of paper to him, but he hesitated. 

"Non, non, m'sieur!" he exclaimed in half protest. 
"How can I take the money when I come not back to 
you ? It was to be a — what do you say ? — a bonus, if 
I returned. And now I do not return. "Non, m'sieur, 
I cannot take it." 

"But, Rene," I insisted — "how ridiculous! It was 
a contract. The money is yours. I have no right to 
it. I shall be very much displeased if you do not 
take it. So will madame. I mean it." 

Rene fingered his mustache. 

"It is very kind of you, m'sieur," he said simply, 
"but if I take it it will be only because of my coun- 
try. Each month I send all but a few dollars back to 
France — all I can spare. Keep half, then, m'sieur, 

58 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

and buy for me a few of those bonds of liberty — 
that bind all the Allies together. Yes, m'sieur, you 
shall invest for me here half of this money, and half I 
shall send to France." 

"You are a good fellow, Rene !" I cried, holding out 
my hand. "Very well; I will do as you say. But 
don't forget us ! Some time, when you are not busy, 
come round and let us know how you are getting on." 

I stood on the front steps and watched him, through 
the slight mist in my eyes, limping down the street 
until he turned the corner in the direction of Third 
Avenue. Surely the war had done something for 
Rene — something for all of us ! 

In the hall I met Margery, her hair afly, her hands 
black with dust, and an expression of horror, mingled 
with amusement, upon her face. 

"Dad," she announced, "there's hardly a piece of 
china that isn't nicked ! And as for the glass, I can't 
seem to find more than a few odd pieces of each kind. 
It was a new set last year I" 

" Never mind," I answered, slipping my arm through 
hers. "There'll be all we shall need. I guess we won't 
do much entertaining this year. I like variety, any- 
how. What are we going to have for lunch ? " 

"Canned ox-tail soup," she laughed. "Scrambled 
eggs and grapes. What's the matter with that I" 

"Nothing," I agreed. "And the sooner I get at it 
the better satisfied I shall be." 

59 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"You know, this picnicking is rather jolly," con- 
tinued my erstwhile dainty daughter. "It's lots of 
fun doing things oneself. . . . Hello! There's 
mother!" 

She sprang to the front door and swept it open with 
a courtesy. 

"Come right in, mum !" she mimicked. "Shure an* 
the missis'U be tickled to death to see yez ! And lunch 
is after being ready on the table this quarter of an 
hour!" 

"Well," remarked Helen as, a few moments later, 
we drew round the board presided over by Mrs. 
Gavin, "I've got a cook!" 

"How much a month?" I inquired. 

"Forty dollars," she answered triumphantly. "And 
we used to pay Julia seventy-five! Besides, this one 
will come without a kitchen-maid, and that means a 
saving of thirty-five dollars a month more ! " 

"Great business! What other victories have you 
achieved?" 

"A parlor-maid, a laundress, and a chambermaid — 
for thirty dollars a month each." 

"Instead of " 

"A butler at eighty, a second man at sixty, two 
laundresses at forty, a parlor-maid, two lady's-maids, 
and two chambermaids at thirty-five each." 

"Helen!" I stammered, aghast. "Do you seri- 
60 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

ously mean to tell me that you can run the house with 
four servants instead of eleven?" 

"I do ! Of course we'll have to close up one of the 
bedroom floors entirely, and two of the three sitting- 
rooms. I may even leave the furniture covers on in 
some places. You won't mind, will you? It will cut 
the house almost in half. Four servants can handle it 
easily. 

"Of course I don't mean to claim that your bells 
will be answered so quickly, or that you'll get French 
cooking, or that I won't have to keep you waiting 
sometimes when you want me to go out with you in 
the evening — I shan't have any personal maid, you 
know; but think of the saving — a hundred and thirty 
dollars a month as against five hundred and five!" 

"And the food they would have eaten!" I added 
with a glow of satisfaction. "Heaven knows what 
quantities ! " 

"That is another matter," remarked my wife 
judicially — "one I shall have to look into. But if I 
can reduce my servants' pay-roll by three hundred and 
seventy-five dollars — over 70 per cent — I ought to be 
able to do something with the butcher's and grocer's 
bills." 

" 'Who can find a virtuous woman?'" I murmured 
admiringly, " ' for her price is far above rubies.' " 

My wife threw me a grateful smile. 

"We shall probably have our ups and downs," she 
61 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

admitted. "Mrs. Russell has been having a terrible 
time. You see, she kept her whole staff of domestics 
and cut down the kitchen-table to almost nothing. 
She insisted that it was too much trouble to try to get 
new servants. And this morning, when the butler 
gave notice and so did the cook, she was so paralyzed 
with fright that she told them to go ahead just as they 
had before." 

"That's a fine way to get behmd the administra- 
tion!" I retorted in disgust. "What do you hear of 
other people?" 

"A great many are cutting down or living in hotels. 
The employment offices are full of domestics looking 
for places — even men. I didn't have any trouble. 
Our chief diflBculty is going to be about the supply 
bills. . . . John, you look tired ! What's the matter ? " 

"Oh, nothing," I evaded her. "It's all right. Feel- 
ing our journey a little, I guess. Then I have had my 
talk with Rene — and I built a fire in the furnace." 

''I'm so glad you did," she replied. "The house 
was too cold." 

"So am I," I muttered, but for a different reason. 

When the new servants, in due course, made their 
appearance I was unable to observe any difference be- 
tween them and the old. It is quite true that it took 
our one maid somewhat longer to serve dinner than it 
had our butler and second man; but personally I felt 

62 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

much more at ease than when every mouthful I ate 
was being watched and criticised by the imposing 
gentlemen who had hitherto condescended to pass me 
my food in return for their board and lodging, in ad- 
dition to a monetary consideration almost as large as 
had been my paternal grandfather's salary as a clergy- 
man. 

Moreover, as the days passed I did not notice that 
the meals were any less abundant or appetizing than 
before. Like most men, I cared nothing for variety. 
What I wanted was solid food, well cooked. And this 
I had in plenty; in fact, after the lapse of a week I 
asked Helen whether she was not rather extravagant 
in her providing. 

Seriously, I had not noticed any particular change 
in our manner of living, except a few trifles, such as 
that after the soup we now had fish or meat, salad or 
dessert, instead of all four; that when we had chops 
they did not wear pantalets; and that our desserts 
lacked the architectural magnificence and Cinque- 
cento ornamentation that had previously characterized 
them. 

"Extravagant?" answered Helen, opening a drawer 
and handing me a little pile of slips. "Perhaps I'll 
get the ordering down finer as we go along. As it is, 
we are living on about a third of what we used to 
spend. Most of it went on the kitchen-table; but 
there was a tremendous waste on our own. I suppose 

63 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

you've noticed that we don't have very much left 
over when we get through? No? Well, Julia's idea 
— the idea of most cooks in big houses, I guess — was 
that the serving of a luncheon or dinner was an aes- 
thetic affair. How the table looked was just as im- 
portant as how the food tasted. 

"For instance, she always served a complete circle 
of lamb chops, no matter how many of us were going 
to eat them; and the roast beef or saddle of lamb had 
to be big enough to look well on the dish. Quantity 
was an end in itself; it was part of a properly ordered 
meal. And we always had meat twice a day and 
fancy fruits from the grocer. Haven't you missed 
them?" 

"Missed what?" I asked. 

"The meat and fruit." 

"Haven't we been having them right along?'* 

Helen could not repress a smile. 

" What is the use of keeping house for a man, any- 
way," she exclaimed with assumed peevishness, "when 
he doesn't care two cents whether the table is pretty 
or not, or whether he eats steak or baked beans!" 

"But I'm crazy about beans!" I replied. 

"Then you ought to be perfectly satisfied," she 
laughed. "You've had them three times this 
week!" 

" I am," I answered. " I don't want anything better. 

And that fillet of sole you gave me last night " 

64 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

"Flounder, at sixteen cents a pound!" she inter- 
rupted. 

"But, Helen," I protested with sincere admiration, 
"how did you know how to do it? You who've al- 
ways been used to the best of everything and have 
hated to have anything to do with servants, or even 
to go into the kitchen ! " 

She looked at me quizzically. 

"John," she said, "you don't think I'm an abso- 
lute fool, do you? Don't you suppose that I — and 
all rich women — ^have always known that we did not 
eat simply in order to satisfy our hunger and keep 
ourselves strong and well — but for appearances? It 
didn't take any brains to realize that. The food 
served in the dining-room has always had a decorative 
quality — ^just like the linen and silver and china. And 
there had to be a certain number of courses. Why, 
I never used to sit down to lunch, even by myself, 
without having some sort of hors d'oeuvre, soup, an 
entree, salad, and dessert! You don't imagine I 
thought I needed them, do you? Now tell me: What 
do you have for lunch down-town?" 

"A slice of roast beef and a cup of coffee." 

"Exactly !" she retorted. "You eat what you need 
to satisfy your appetite, and no more. Well, we 
women used to eat the kind of food a seventy-five-dol- 
lar cook thought she ought to prepare and an eighty- 
dollar butler would be willing to serve without losing 

65 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

his self-respect. Can you see old Chatterton serving 
a slice of roast beef and a cup of coffee?" 

I couldn't, by any stretch of my imagination. 

"No," I admitted; "nor can I imagine him eating 
a lunch of just roast beef and coffee! I am sure he 
never condescended to touch anything but p^te de 
foie gras and vintage champagne." 

" Pretty near it ! I've been studying our old market- 
books. You probably won't believe it, but in one 
month last year we ate in this house over one hundred 
and fifty pounds of roast beef and a hundred dollars' 
worth of fruit!" 

"You say we ate it?" 

"Why, yes; I suppose we must have," she an- 
swered doubtfully. 

"Helen," I adjured her, "don't deceive yourself! 
We didn't eat it; we were just charged for it!" 

Down at the oflBce I timidly recounted to my part- 
ner Lord some of the high lights of our recent do- 
mestic revolution. He listened with only polite in- 
terest, intimating that I was way behind the times. 
It appeared that most people of our means had also 
awakened to the absurdity or at least the high cost of 
table-dressing. 

"Don't talk to me about it, old man," he begged. 
"Honestly, it makes me ill! I've just figured out 
that this blooming hidebound conventionality about 

66 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

eating has cost me over fifty thousand dollars in the 
last ten years. How I wish I had it now 1 " 

That is what the first jar of the present earthquake 
did to the Stanton menage, to my partner, and to num- 
bers of my friends. It has jarred us harder than some 
other people, because it has actually reduced our in- 
comes. We have been forced to cut down. It is far 
less to our credit than to that of those who have done 
so voluntarily. But, whatever the reason, it is a 
good thing. Waste in food is the most wasteful of all 
waste, for the reason that it is constant — three times 
3- day, year in and year out. • 

Even before the present campaign for domestic 
economy instituted by the Food Administration, tre- 
mendous saving had been going on as far back as 1915- 
1916. I am credibly informed that last winter New 
York City's refuse had been reduced by thirty-three per 
cent, and that the oflScial scavengers found they could 
get through their work two hours earlier each day! 
Hotels and hospitals that had paid considerable sums 
to have their swill taken away found it a substantial 
source of income. The unseparated fats had lined 
the garbage-pail with gold I 

The war has set everybody thinking about things 
that the European studied and systematized, as a 
matter of course, centuries past. The Frenchman, the 
Italian, the German, and the Englishman long ago 

67 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

discovered that for the worker it is, in general, easier 
to save than to increase one's earning capacity and 
that a careful adjustment of expenditure to needs in 
daily life would, in due time, bring comfort if not 
wealth. I realized, at last, the reason why thrift 
on the part of the mistress of the household is lauded 
throughout the pages of Holy Writ. I suppose the 
respect paid to the wealthy even in recent times was 
due to the belief that riches could only be attained 
by industry and thrift, and that therefore the rich 
man was a virtuous citizen and one to be proud of. 
Even if we won't admit it, we still have something 
of the same feeling — always, of course, conceding that 
millionaires, as a class, are a parcel of crooks. 

Crooked or not, however, we have always insisted 
that the rich man should spend his money freely — 
perhaps in order that we might get some of it. The 
"tightwad" was and is our national detestation. On 
the stage the close-lipped stingy financier always 
went to jail, and the lavish, roistering young spend- 
thrift was played up as a hero. It was considered 
almost a duty for the rich to be wasteful. Lavishness 
was felt to indicate a spiritual superiority to lucre. 

One may be inclined to doubt whether the million- 
aire who floods the Tenderloin with champagne shows 
as much contempt for his money as he does a soulful 
appreciation of what it can buy. One is tempted into 
somewhat foggy metaphysics in pursuit of the allur- 

68 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

ing desire to give the devil his due in this respect. 
But, anyhow, we all do hate a mean man. 

Well, the war has made us discriminate between 
meanness and thrift. Thrift is the prevention of 
waste; meanness is saving for oneself alone. But war 
is waste "elevated into a religion." They say at the 
Rockefeller Institute that the cost of the present war 
for one week would stamp out tuberculosis all over the 
world forever I 

All of us are now educated to the tremendous re- 
sults that can be effected by slight economies on the 
part of the individuals composing a nation of a hun- 
dred million people. Thanks to Mr. Hoover, we dream 
dreams and see visions — of mountains of sugar and 
rivers of milk — all created by our mere abstinence 
from one cup of tea or coffee a week. After all, it 
doesn't require a great deal of imagination. Multiply 
almost anything by one hundred million and we are 
quite naturally left gasping. 

One hundred million loaves of bread takes, in the 
making, a powerful lot of flour — which might be sent 
to the Allies. The war has jarred that into the heads 
of a lot of good people who never thought of it before. 
More than that, it has brought home to everybody a 
startling conception of the tremendous latent power 
for saving — which, after all, is the equivalent of pro- 
duction — possessed by the American people. And, 
because it is so easy to accomplish a gigantic result by 

69 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

the simplest means, everybody ought to start in, as a 
matter of course, to help. 

As a result thrift is going to be elevated to its an- 
cient niche among the cardinal American virtues. Of 
course with some this will be due to mere self-interest. 
When eggs are too high people go without omelets. 
But principally it will be due to the nation-wide 
recognition of the fact that waste is wrong — and under 
present circumstances a crime ! 

The amount of stale bread thrown away daily in 
New York City reached into the tons. The only 
reason for this was that more bread was baked than 
was needed. So it was with everything that was 
served by the piece. The cook always sent up at 
least one extra chop — for looks. If she ordered ten 
pounds of roast, the butcher — ^presuming upon her 
good nature or relying upon her connivance — sent her 
twelve and a half or thirteen. It was cut in the 
kitchen and served in the dining-room. People helped 
themselves to two slices because one slice didn't seem 
enough, though two were obviously too much. Pie 
was cut into huge segments in the pantry before it 
was passed. Housewives habitually served twice as 
much of everything as was necessary in order to earn 
the proud title of "liberal providers." Puddings, 
more than half the time, were sent back to the 
kitchen only partly consumed. 

Nothing in metropolitan centres ever reappeared 
70 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

upon the dining-room table, once it had been taken 
away. I speak, of course, of establishments where a 
number of servants are employed. These servants 
ate and still eat five or six meals a day, without any 
restraint upon their power of consumption. They be- 
gan with a heavy breakfast, between seven and eight 
o'clock in the morning, consisting of tea and coffee, 
hot bread, eggs, bacon, oatmeal, jam, and fruit. At 
ten or half past they had and have a second or sup- 
plementary breakfast of bread, milk, coffee, or tea — 
"Just a bite, you know, madam !" 

Dinner at twelve sees the kitchen-table groaning 
under the burden of the chief or third meal of the 
day — soup, roast meat or fish, vegetables, tea, coffee, 
and milk, cake, pie, pudding, jam, preserves, fruit. 
Along about two-thirty the famished domestic is 
moved to avert starvation by a fourth resort to the 
larder, and a secondary luncheon of tea, coffee, milk, 
lemonade, cake, the remains of the pie and the fruit, 
and any unconsidered trifles from up-stairs that 
may have been salvaged by the butler or parlor- 
maid. 

Thus they are enabled to endure the pangs of 
hunger until five o'clock, when the regular supper is 
served, followed by another — or sixth — meal at nine 
or ten o'clock, just before the friends go home, con- 
sisting of everything that is left in the house which 
they have previously overlooked. 

71 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

To meet these useless and extravagant demands, 
cooks are accustomed to order huge quantities of raw 
and canned foods, which, in addition to being a temp- 
tation to waste, constitute an equally strong one to 
dishonesty upon the part of those employees who, 
though they share in the general gastronomical priv- 
ileges below stairs, live out and have others less for- 
tunate dependent upon them at home. 

How well I remember discovering in our area our 
cook's aunt — a massive lady from Galway — with a 
basket hardly concealed beneath her shawl, in which 
were a fourteen-pound roast, a milk-fed Philadelphia 
capon, several packages of tea, sugar, and coffee, 
various jars of preserves and cans of table delicacies, 
and a handful of my best cigars ! But that was 
long ago. 

The war has brought up mistress and servant alike 
with a jerk. My sober guess is that, in the section of 
New York City between Fifty-ninth and Ninetieth 
Streets and Fifth and Madison Avenues not fifty per 
cent of the mistresses of households knew what their 
servants had for dinner, or how many persons sat down 
to table in the servants' dining-hall — including fol- 
lowers, brothers, sisters, aunts, and cousins just over 
or temporarily out of a job; how many times a week 
meat was served in the kitchen; what proportion the 
bills for the maintenance of the help bore to the 
total cost of keeping up the establishment; or whether 

72 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

the price of flour was five dollars or twenty dollars a 
barrel. Well, they know now — some of them ! 

Ladies who have always assumed that it would be 
indelicate to refer to a pot-roast or a rump-steak now 
daily visit their ice-boxes and direct the activities of 
their cooks. The regime of the Queen of the Kitchen 
is over, unless she is one of Mr. Hoover's anointed. 
It is a paradox of interest that in some households 
employing a large number of servants, where from 
five hundred to one thousand dollars a month is spent 
for food supplies alone, the monthly budget has 
grown steadily less, with the advance in prices, since 
our entry into the war. 

The reason is not far to seek. Where heretofore 
there was no restraint upon the cooks, now, for the 
first time, some attention at least is being paid to the 
quantity of supplies ordered, their quality and cost, 
and the use to which the remnants of food left over 
from each meal are put. One lady tells me that the 
moral effect of her nodding to the cook in the morning 
is enough to save her about ten dollars a day. If it 
saves ten dollars in money, what must that nod save 
toward the flour and sugar we must send to starving 
France and Belgium? 

This is highly encouraging as far as it goes; but, so 
far as I have observed, only a small minority of peo- 
ple of my acquaintance — unless their incomes have 
been reduced — have materially cut down their scale of 

73 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

living. Those who, like myself, have been compelled 
to do so have bowed to necessity; but I know of but 
few of my friends who are reorganizing their house- 
holds and enforcing genuine domestic economies in 
order to buy more Liberty Bonds or give the money 
thus saved to war relief. 

They are, no doubt, buying Liberty Bonds and giv- 
ing generously to war charities, but they have not 
reached the state of mind in which they feel called 
upon to endure discomfort, or even to inconvenience 
themselves in order to furnish additional money for 
the support of the government or for relief-work. 

We saw the same phenomenon in times of peace. 
Rich women who believed that Christ measured the 
value of giving by the sacrifice involved, and taught 
that to save one's soul it might, in some instances at 
least, be well to sell everything one had and give the 
proceeds to the poor, were entirely satisfied to con- 
tinue to roll round in their limousines, though they 
could have disposed of them at a reasonable price and 
saved the lives of hundreds of tubercular children with 
the money. 

Most of the people I know are sincerely trying to 
follow out the directions of the Food Administration 
and to conserve those special necessaries that are so 
vital to our alUes and to our own fighting force. Apart 
from that, I don't think they have really done very 
much. It is too often a hard and disagreeable job, 

74 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

involving usually a state of belligerency, or at least 
armed neutrality, with the domestics. 

There is another aspect of affairs upon which the 
lady of fashion might profitably consult her pet clair- 
voyant: If we are forced to send a couple of million 
men to France and Italy in order to pull the fangs of 
Hindenburg and Ludendorff, she will in time be apt to 
find herself not only without a chauffeur, butler, or 
second man, but cookless and maidless as well. With 
her agreeable bank balance she may be willing to 
continue to pay the upward-leaping wages of the 
leisure class who wait on us; but not so the majority 
of employers. The servants will seek other work. 

Wages of domestics generally have gone up from 
fifteen to twenty per cent since the war began. Con- 
sidering that they receive their board and lodging, 
which have gone up about fifty per cent in the same 
period, a female domestic servant is costing her mis- 
tress not far from thirty-five per cent more than a 
year or so ago. A twenty-five-dollar maid now asks 
thirty-five, and her board costs about ten dollars a 
month more than it did. 

But it will not eventually, I feel sure, be so much 
a question of wages; the difficulty will be to get 
servants at all. The scarcity of labor will not stop 
when it reaches Fifth Avenue. I should not be at 
all surprised, if the war continues another two years, 
to find practically every mistress of a household with 

75 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

her daughters doing their share of the housework, as 
a matter of course — ^just as they are doing in England. 

And that is exactly what Helen and Margery are 
doing now. If the wives of my friends are not will- 
ing to do this — why, they had better look round for 
a nice, dry, airy cave in a sunny climate where they 
can sleep on the ground, live on yams and breadfruit 
and bathe — if they still find bathing necessary and 
agreeable — in the nearest brook. 

But running the house is a woman's Job, let who will 
deny it. Mrs. Emily James Putnam, in "The Lady," 
quotes the account Ischomachos gave to Socrates of 
how he started his wife in the right direction after he 
had married her. Isch was a young Athenian swell of 
about the same social status as our friend Highbilt, 
here in New York. 

"First," said he, "we put together everything that 
had to do with the sacrifices. Then we grouped the 
maids' best clothes, the men's best clothes and their 
soldier outfits, the maids' bedding, the men's bedding, 
the maids' shoes and the men's shoes. We put weap- 
ons in one group and classified under different heads 
the tools for wool-working, baking, cooking, care of 
the bath and of the table, and so on. Then we made 
a cross-classification of things used every day and 
things used on holidays only. Next we set aside from 
the stores sufiicient provisions for a month, and also 
what we calculated would last a year. That is the 

76 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

only way to keep your supplies from running out be- 
fore you know it. 

"After that we put everything in its appropriate 
place, summoned the servants, explained our system 
to them, and made each one responsible for the safety 
of each article needed in his daily work, and for res- 
toration, after use, to its proper place. ... I told my 
wife that good laws will not keep a state in order un- 
less they are enforced, and that she, as the chief exec- 
utive officer under our constitution, must contrive by 
rewards and punishments that law should prevail in 
our house. 

"By way of apology for laying upon her so many 
troublesome duties, I bade her observe that we can- 
not reasonably expect servants spontaneously to be 
careful of the master's goods, since they have no in- 
terest in being so; the owner is the one who must 
take trouble to preserve his property. ... I advised 
her to look on at the bread-making and stand by while 
the housekeeper dealt out the supplies, and to go 
about inspecting everything. Thus she could practise 
her profession and take a walk at the same time. I 
added that excellent exercise could be had by making 
beds and kneading dough." 

Good sense, that! The newly wedded Mrs. Ischo- 
machos could teach a good deal to some of our war 
brides. Modern New York can learn something from 
ancient Athens. But our women will come up to 

77 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

the domestic scratch later on, even if they have not 
done so already. Education is slow, particularly in 
the case of the middle-aged — and resurfacing one's 
gastro-intestinal tract is a hazardous process. 

However, it is doing Helen and Margery and me a 
great deal of good. My wife looks younger than she 
has for years, because she eats only what she needs to 
eat and walks instead of riding in a motor. Both 
she and Margery have gained alertness in body and 
mind. They have tackled their job gallantly and 
have never even complained; but I know that at 
times it has been hard for them. 

It is easy enough for the man who is away from 
home all day, occupied about his business. He does 
not care very much how the house runs so long as he 
gets his warm supper, his pipe, and his cosey chair by 
the reading-lamp. It is the woman who has to as- 
sume all the worry of making things go, of planning 
all the details of housekeeping, of keeping the servants 
good-natured, of making both ends meet. It is trebly 
hard if one has to begin after fifty. It is often easier 
to give up one's money or one's sons than to break 
the habits of a lifetime. 

The war is doing strange things to us. It is giving 
us new natures. I have not said my prayers since I 
was a boy, and I gave up reading the Scriptures years 
ago; but the other night, just before we went up to 
bed, I took down our old dusty family Bible and 

78 



MY HOUSEHOLD 

opened it at the family record. There, in my moth- 
er's fine handwriting, was the record of my birth, and 
beneath it, in Helen's, was that of our Jack — who is 
going away so soon. 

"Look here, Helen," I said awkwardly, "don't 
you think we might get something out of this again 
if we read a bit every night?" 

She nodded, her face lighting up with eagerness. 
"I'm so glad you feel that way, John I" she exclaimed. 

So I turned over the pages until I came to what I 
was looking for — the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs 
— and cleared my throat. 

"'Who can find a virtuous woman?'" I read, 
" 'for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her 
husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have 
no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil 
all the days of her life. She seeketh wool, and flax, 
and worketh willingly with her hands. She is like the 
merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from afar. 
She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat 
to her household, and a portion to her maidens. She 
considereth a field and buyeth it; with the fruit of her 
hands she planteth a vineyard. She girdeth her loins 
with strength, and strengtheneth her arms. She per- 
ceiveth that her merchandise is good; her candle goeth 
not out by night. She layeth her hands to the spindle, 
and her hands hold the distaff. . . . She looketh well 
to the ways of her household, and eateth not the 

79 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

bread of idleness. Her children arise up and call her 
blessed: her husband also, and he praiseth her. 
Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou ex- 
cellest them all.' 

"Thou excellest them all!" I repeated softly. 

"Oh, John !" murmured Helen, and a blush flickered 
prettily for a moment upon her cheek. "Don't you 
think you might get a little tired of a woman quite 
as competent as all that?" 



80 



Ill 

MY FRIENDS 

"The End of worldly life awaits us all: 
Let him who may, gain honor ere death." 

We were just getting up from breakfast the Monday 
morning after our return to New York when the door- 
bell rang and our old friend Kenneth Adams came in, 
pale and agitated. 

"What's the matter, Ken?" asked Helen. "Did 
your cook spoil the coffee ? " 

"No," he replied nervously. "We haven't any cook 
— ^but that's not my trouble. Lucy's got appendicitis 
— at least that is what young Hopkins says, and I 
haven't any reason to doubt his word. He says she 
ought to be operated on immediately." 

"What a shame !" said Helen. "Still, she'll be ever 
so much better without it. Of course the operation 
isn't pleasant, but once her appendix is out " 

"Yes, but who's going to take it out?" demanded 
Kenneth. 

"What's the matter with McCook?" I inquired, 
with callous levity. "He's supposed to be our best 
local excavator, isn't he ? " 

"McCook? He's been in Paris for two years and a 
half!" 

81 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"Oh, yes, I remember," I admitted. "So he has. 
How about Furness? — he's one of the 'Big Four.' " 

"Furness sailed with the Fordyee Unit last spring. 
He's on the firing-line." 

"Well, Jameson then. One is about as good as 
another." 

"Jameson's gone, too." 

"Farley?" 

"Farley's down in Washington — ^he's a major, I 
believe — helping on some advisory medical board." 

"By George!" I ejaculated with more sympathy. 
"Some medical exodus — what?" 

"I'm at my wits' end !" declared Adams. "All the 
big operators have gone away. I've called up hos- 
pital after hospital, doctor's office after doctor's of- 
fice, and they all tell me the same thing — Dr. So-and- 
So has been away since June or July in 1914 — or 
whatever the fact is." 

"But what's the matter with Freylingheusen ? " I 
queried. " I saw him at the theatre the other night." 

" Freylingheusen ? " retorted Adams bitterly. " Why, 
he's a thousand years old! Appendicitis wasn't even 
invented when he went to the medical school. I 
wouldn't trust him to cut up cat meat, let alone my 
wife. I tell you I'm up against it !" 

"But the hospitals can't be absolutely denuded," 
I insisted. "Surely you can get some one " 

"Some one — yes. But would you want just some 
82 



MY FRIENDS 

one to operate on Helen here? The hospital staffs 
have been just about cut in half, and the fellows that 
are left are the young ones nobody ever heard of." 

He wiped the sweat from his forehead. 

"I don't know what to do!" he groaned. "Hop- 
kins keeps assuring me that the operation is a perfectly 
simple one and that nobody thinks anything of it at 
all these days. 'Only five per cent mortality,' he says. 
Think of telling me that. 'Mortality' — nice word to 
have a surgeon chuck at you ! He suggests I should 
engage a Hebrew friend of his named Oppenheim — 
sounds like a novelist! — but I have an idea that he 
really wants to do the operation himself." 

"Well, why don't you let him?" 

" Hopkins ? Nonsense ! " 

"Why?" 

"Why — he's too young for one thing. He's all 
right as a sort of general practitioner " 

"How old is he?" 

Adams hesitated. 

"I — don't — ^know," he answered slowly. "Come to 
think of it, he must be well over forty." 

"Well," I retorted. "If he's ever going to be old 
enough to operate I should think he would be now. 
Why don't you let him?" 

My friend waved a frenzied hand. 

"I wouldn't let him touch Lucy with a ten-foot 
pole. I won't have an mexperienced man slashing 

83 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

up my wife. I want the biggest surgeon there is — 
and he'd be none too good. There must be some one 
— even in another city." 

Helen had arisen and had been standing looking 
out into the sunlit yard of the day-school in our rear. 
Now she turned and laid her hand on Kenneth's 
arm. 

"Listen, Kenneth!" she admonished him. "I 
know exactly how you feel and I'm awfully sorry about 
Lucy — but things aren't as bad as they seem Just at 
this moment. We've been away and haven't kept in 
touch, but perhaps we can understand all the better. 
Now, from what you say it would appear that most of 
the well-known surgeons have gone away — to France, 
or Washington, or medical reserve officers' camps. 
However, the hospitals are still manned and equipped. 
The big men all have to die off some time. There are 
always others just as good — or practically so — to fill 
their places. I've heard both Oppenheim and Hop- 
kins very well spoken of. Why don't you try one of 
them?" 

But Kenneth shook his head gloomily. 

"No," he retorted. "Nobody but the biggest man 
in the business is going to operate on my wife! I 
thought maybe I'd overlooked some one and that you 
might be able to suggest a name. But I'll have to 
try elsewhere. There must be some crackerjack sur- 
geon who hasnH gone." 

84 



MY FRIENDS 

"What do you suppose other people will do?" I 
asked rather impatiently. 

"I don't know what they'll do," he declared wildly. 
"What's that to me? That's an entirely different 
matter, isn't it?" He got up, removed his hat from 
the table where he had laid it, and took a step toward 
the door without offering to shake hands. "There 
must be some one ! " he kept repeating. 

"Try Oppenheim," urged Helen. 

"A fellow I never heard of!" he almost shouted. 
"I'd rather have Hopkins!" 

He turned and hurried out into the front hall, 
mumbling to himself. The door slammed and I saw 
his shadow fall across the window. 

"Poor Kenneth!" sighed Helen. "I don't blame 
him for being nervous about Lucy, but, really, don't 
you think there is a touch of egotism about his in- 
sistence upon his surgical rights ? It isn't as if there 
were no surgeons capable of taking out Lucy's ap- 
pendix. And, honestly, her appendix isn't any more 
valuable than anybody's else." 

"Of course it isn't!" I answered. "The luxury, 
or at any rate the comfort, most of us have enjoyed 
in America has given us an artificial sense of our own 
physical importance. Because we want things for our- 
selves they have got to be better than what are quite 
good enough for other people, who are used to getting 
in line and taking what is handed out to them. We 

85 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

must have the best seats at the theatre, the corner 
suite at the hotel, and a private stateroom on the Pull- 
man " 

"The choicest cuts of beef, the most expensive 
automobiles, the richest man in town to marry our 
daughter, and the most famous surgeon in the coun- 
try to operate on us. Well, it isn't going to be so any 
longer. There aren't going to be any favorites. First 
come will be first served — and maybe the last will go 
without." 

"I see where we have simply got to keep well!" I 
remarked. 

Helen laughed. 

"I forbid you to have appendicitis," she said. 

I had not been to my office since the eventful day 
of our return, having availed myself of my partner's 
suggestion that I should get my domestic affairs in 
order before bothering my head about business. The 
task of readjusting those affairs to the new conditions 
in which we found ourselves had proved far less diffi- 
cult than I had anticipated. For example, save for 
the fact that we were unable to take our customary 
Sunday afternoon run into the country I should not 
have noticed the absence of our motor. We had not 
as yet had time to ascertain who of our friends had 
returned to town and we had all been so busy that the 
influence of the war had hardly made itself felt; save 

S6 



MY FRIENDS 

for the necessity of the comparatively trifling econ- 
omies we had inaugurated. 

As I walked down-town I was struck by the pro- 
fusion of "To Let" and "For Sale" signs displayed 
upon both sides of the street. In place of the previous 
scattering few, they now everywhere thrust them- 
selves upon one's notice. At the apartment-house on 
the corner I found that they had replaced the elevator 
men with women. Two military service motors passed 
me driven by young ladies in khaki, and I observed 
with interest two little girls delivering telegrams. I 
wasn't looking for war signs. In fact, my attitude 
had been rather one of scepticism. Apart from the 
slump in my own business I had as yet seen no reflec- 
tion of war in actual conditions. Business seemed 
to be going on as usual, and Fifth Avenue had never 
been so crowded with motors. However, I encoun- 
tered Jim Lockwood, and farther along Horace Gib- 
son, both men of about my age and in uniform, taking 
their small girls to school, and wondered what sort 
of military service they were engaged in. Between 
Seventy-second and Thirty-fourth Streets I passed or 
overtook, by actual count, twenty-seven men in army 
or navy uniforms — before nine o'clock — and at Six- 
tieth Street I heard a humming like that of a gigantic 
cockchafer and, looking overhead, saw a monoplane 
sailing across Central Park, going west toward Jersey. 
Mind you, if I had been in New York right along I 

87 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

probably shouldn't have paid any attention to these 
phenomena, but I had been away, practically asleep 
on a sugar-plantation, for nearly ten months, and 
everything — as the saying is — "hit me between the 
eyes." That aeroplane particularly ! A year ago the 
whirr of its propeller would have brought every house- 
maid out into the street within the radius of three 
miles, and now — nobody paid the slightest attention 
to it! 

Along Fifth Avenue in the course of my walk of 
only two miles I saw innumerable service-flags, the 
stars running from one to five in private houses and 
as high as fifty or sixty on one or two of the largest 
stores. The sidewalks, of course, were just as full of 
people as ever, but there, before my eyes, was the 
tangible evidence that at least a regiment of men had 
gone to the front from the immediate neighborhood. 
Two crowded buses containing a company of negro 
guardsmen came out of Fifty-seventh Street and turned 
up Fifth Avenue without attracting more than a 
casual glance from the pedestrians. In the Subway I 
read the notice that the Interborough Railroad had 
lost no less than twelve hundred and sixty employees 
on account of enlistment. Three officers in uniform 
in adjacent seats to my own, going down-town, seemed 
to excite no interest. But when I reached the Bridge 
and, emerging upon Broadway, perceived the huge 
service-flag of the New York Telephone Company 



MY FRIENDS 

with its more than six thousand stars I grasped, for 
the first time, the reality of the thing. For every 
man a star — for every star a herd What a host of 
them! What a glory. 

Somehow my eyes grew moist at the vision of 
those hundreds of boys — round-shouldered, pasty- 
faced, undernourished — chaps you wouldn't have 
credited with any particular idealism — whose chief 
interest you would have assumed to be an evening 
spent at the movies with some gum-chewing, muddy- 
complexioned girl — now stumping along with set faces 
to the whistle of the fife under the Stars and Stripes. 
Youthful cynics, most of them, sophisticated to the 
ways of business and of politics, suspicious of motives, 
creedless, churchless, rebellious to authority, sceptics. 
What had sent them ? What had sent my Jack ? For 
answer the inscription upon the monument in "Sol- 
dier's Field" at Harvard floated across the curling 
folds of the great flag with its myriad of stars: 

"Though love repine and reason chafe. 
There comes a voice without reply: 
'Twere man's perdition to be safe 
When for the Truth he ought to die!" 

Below Fulton Street the city was all aflutter with 
flags, and many motors passed in both directions 
driven by or carrying officers. It occurred to me that, 
as I was in his neighborhood, I would drop in on Fred 

89 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

Hawkins, the senior member of the firm of Hawkins, 
Ludlow & Fowler, who attended to our law business 
when we were unfortunate enough to have any. To 
my surprise I noticed that the name on the door now 
read merely "Ludlow & Fowler." The clerk in the 
outer office informed me that Mr. Hawkins was away, 
but that Mr. Ludlow would be glad to see me in the 
library, where he was working. 

"How d'you do, Stanton?" he exclaimed cordially, 
holding out his hand. "Why, no, Hawkins hasn't 
been with us since last May. He went over with 
Pershing; he was very lucky — got a major's commis- 
sion on the judge-advocate general's staff." 

"Isn't he a bit over age?" I inquired, finding it 
difficult to imagine my rather elderly attorney in 
epaulets. "And hasn't he got several children?" 

"He's fifty-one," conceded Ludlow. "But his 
wife has a little money of her own and the three chil- 
dren are all away at school. I think they spend most 
of their vacations at their grandmother's, anyhow. 
But that wouldn't have made any difference. Fred 
began to get uneasy long before the war actually 
started. He's a sentimental cuss, sort of mediaeval 
and romantic — inherited a chivalric side from his 
mother's family — she was part French, you know. 
The day after the declaration he simply walked 
inhere and said: 'Well, boys, I'm off for the war.' 
And he went. He'd had his pipes all laid for some 

90 



MY FRIENDS 

time. Nothing would have stopped him. We of- 
fered to keep the firm together for him, but he said 
he'd rather resign and be foot-free. So he just 
chucked the whole thing up and now it's * Ludlow & 
Fowler.' " 

"Of course I'd have heard, only I've been away," 
said I in explanation of my ignorance. "I suppose 
I'll find a lot of my other friends gone." 

"Rather!" he returned. "I tell you there's a big 
hole in this town below Fulton Street. The last men 
in the world you would have thought of ! Gone across 
— or down to Washington or on some mission — left 
their jobs and just hiked right out. Take the bar — 
there are so many of 'em gone that we've had to form 
a big committee of lawyers to hold their practice to- 
gether for them." 

"How is the law business?" I inquired politely. 

"Rotten !" he grinned. "But what do you expect? 
There isn't any other business — except war business — 
to be any law business about." 

"I know that the surgeons are pretty well cleaned 
out," said I, thinking of Ken Adams and his appen- 
dicitis case. 

"Oh, there aren't any surgeons!" he agreed. 
"You'd be lucky to get anybody to treat you for 
mumps. If the general health wasn't so much better 
than usual — from cutting out rich grub and rum — I 
don't know what we'd do. Glad to have seen you. 

91 



THE EARTPIQUAKE 

If you should have any law business, don't forget 
us!" 

"I shan't have any law business," I answered 
grimly, "or any other kind around here, I guess, from 
the looks of things." 

The Petroleum National Bank was on the next 
block on my way to the office and I paused at the 
cashier's desk to inquire the amount of my balance. 
Behind a glass partition I could see Rumsey Prall, 
the president, sitting in state at his mahogany desk, 
and after getting my information I pushed my way 
through the brass rail and went in to speak to 
him. 

"Hello, Stanton!" he said, drawing me into a 
chair. "Haven't seen you for a dog's age. Where 
you been — Paris?" 

I shook my head. 

"Not much!" I retorted. "I've been dreaming 
away nearly a year in the Pacific." 

He looked at me with open incredulity. 

"That's a funny safe place to have been!" he 
ejaculated. 

"So I've Just discovered," I replied. "It seems 
that quite a little has happened since I left here. By 
the way, where's Jim Rogers, your vice-president?" 

" Rogers is running the Red Cross over on the other 
side," he answered. "They needed a big man, so we 
had to let him go. Phillips, our third vice, has gone, 

92 



MY FRIENDS 

too. He's in Washington, though. Seen our service- 
flag? Forty -seven stars on it!" he added proudly. 

On the corner of Wall Street I ran into Allston 
Hopkins dressed as a captain, walking with his son 
Sam, who was in the uniform of an ensign in the navy. 
Hopkins is a civil engineer with an international repu- 
tation, who earns, it is said, two or tliree hundred 
thousand dollars a year. He nodded to me, evidently 
not aware that I had been away. 

"Going across?" I asked over my shoulder as I 
passed. 

"I've been over and back five times already," he 
said. "Just got my boy a job !" 

"Good luck to you !" I called after them. 

Already I had an unpleasant feeling of being a sort 
of outsider — as if all about me there was some mystic 
circle to which I did not have the password — a brother- 
hood of which I was not a member. 

There were all kinds of uniforms on Wall Street, 
and several French and Canadian oJBBcers were stroll- 
ing along watching the crowds and looking at the 
Stock Exchange. Suddenly an old woman carrying 
a string-bag full of bundles pushed her way through 
the crowd to where a French captain in an army cape 
was standing before a show-window. She was shabbily 
dressed and her gray hair was far from tidy, but her 
eyes were shining and there was an almost reverential 
expression on her wrinlded face as she timidly touched 

93 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

him upon the arm. He turned and, seeing her eager 
look, raised his cap, as she held out her hand: 

"I just can't help shaking hands with you!" she 
cried tremulously, and with little tears of excitement 
in her eyes. "Do you mind? We can't ever thank 
you enough." 

"C'est avec plaisir, madame, que je vous remercie 
pour Vhonneur fait a mes compatriotes — au nom de la 
France,'' and he bent over the little hand with a bow 
that would have done credit to a nobleman of the 
anden regime, while the little old woman, quite flus- 
tered, looked up and then down and, as if abashed at 
her own temerity, hurried on lest some one should see 
her. The Frenchman stood gazing after her with his 
cap still raised in air for several seconds while the 
crowd swept round him — a gentle smile about his eyes. 
I couldn't help it — I, too, stepped up and laid my 
hand on his arm: 

"Je mux vou^ remercier aussi!" I said, smiling. 
"Nous voulons toiis vov^ remercier!" 

Like a flash he gave me the salute. 

"Mes compliments, m'sieur!" he responded; then 
glancing tenderly in the direction of the little figure 
almost lost in the crowd: "Ah, ceite petite dame agee 
me fait penser a ma chere grand' mere a Falaise!" 

The recollection of that brief scene stayed with me 
all day. I think of it occasionally even now. I am 
glad that old lady did not restrain her impulse to show 

94 



MY FRIENDS 

her appreciation in the only way she could of what 
France has done for us and for the world. 

At the office I found that my partner Lord had 
already been in for a few moments, looked over his 
mail, and hurried out again. Miss Peterson said that 
he had just made an unexpected sale of some bonds 
and had gone over to the vaults personally to super- 
intend delivery. This was news no less grateful than 
it was surprising. Perhaps business was looking up 
again I 

Not having anything in particular to do, I started 
in making a short list of the men I thought I should 
like to see and chat with during the course of the day, 
for under my doctor's orders I had done no letter- 
writing while on my vacation and looked forward with 
a good deal of pleasurable anticipation to renewing the 
old intimacies and hearing what my former cronies had 
to say for themselves. I jotted down some twenty 
names and told Miss Peterson to call up their offices 
and see whether they were in town. Half an hour 
later she laid the slip on my desk with the notes 
which she had made. I will give no names, but 
merely the occupation and whereabouts of twelve out 
of the twenty of my former down-town associates: 



-, Bank President : Acting as assistant to Secretary of the 

Treasury in Washington. 
-, Manufacturer: Member of National Council of Defense 

in Washington. 

95 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

-, Lawyer: Major, Military Intelligence, Washington. 

-, Lawyer: Member Special Commission to Russia. 

-, Vice-President of Trust Company: Red Cross 

executive in Paris. 
-, Capitalist: Y. M. C. A. executive in Paris. 
-, Editor: Allied War Relief in Paris. 
-, Manufacturer : Member of War Industries Board, 

Washington. 
-, Dealer in Railroad Supplies : Gone to Russia on business 

for United States Government. 
-, Lawyer: Executive in Food Administration, Chicago. 
-, Stock Broker: Major, Ordnance Department, France. 
-, Lawyer: Lieutenant-Colonel, National Army, Fort 

Myer. 



Of the twenty there were only eight remaining in 
New York ! Now it may well be that, had I extended 
my list to a hundred names I would have found only 
a few additional absentees. I do not know. What 
struck me was that of the twenty men I most wanted 
to see on my return to New York, a majority had 
offered their services to their country in spite of the 
fact that they were all above military age, all promi- 
nent in affairs, most of them earning large salaries. 
They had abandoned their careers gladly without, 
apparently, a moment's hesitation, simply because 
they thought it was the thing to do. It didn't, and 
it doesn't, seem to me particularly important to know 
what proportion of one's entire acquaintance are re- 
sponding to the call of duty; but it is important to 
know what proportion of the twenty men one regards 
as most worth while are doing so. If I had confined 

96 



MY FRIENDS 

myself to the first ten names, I should have found only 
three of my friends who were not working for the 
government. 

There was nothing doing in the oflSce and I put on 
my hat and went out into the street again. As I 
looked back at our front windows I observed for the 
first time that we had a small service-flag of our own 
with three blue stars on it. Somehow it gave me a 
feeling of encouragement. I wondered if everybody's 
business was as hard hit as my own. 

The streets seemed to be just as crowded as ever 
with people hurrying along about their manifold affairs. 
The only difference was in the amount of bunting dis- 
played everywhere and the posters, some old and torn, 
and others fresh and new, that adorned every hoard- 
ing, wall, and empty barrel. Many of them were 
artistic and their legends inspiring. Side by side with 
posters upon which were displayed the Stars and 
Stripes were others with the Union Jack and the ban- 
ner of St. George calling upon all loyal Englishmen 
and Canadians in the United States to enlist under 
their own flag: "Britishers — Enlist to-day!" "British 
blood calls British blood! Sons of Britain join your 
army here — enlist now!" 

One poster especially gripped my imagination — the 
figure of a marine in khaki, one foot advanced, stand- 
ing in front of the flag, his left fist clinched and in his 
right a pistol, with a look of dogged determination 

97 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

upon his bronzed face. "First in the Fight — Always 
Faithful!" Two other posters showed our boys in 
khaki charging up a hill, bearing the flag, and another 
a group, similar to that in the familiar painting, in- 
scribed "Spirit of 1917." That was it ! The Spirit of 
1917! I had been accustomed to growl at English 
stupidity and bad manners, to scoff at French laxity 
and frivolity; now the sight of French and English 
uniforms among the crowd and the French and 
English colors juxtaposed with my own sent a fine 
glow through my veins. This was a new world I had 
come back into! A bigger world — a world of the 
spirit — ^the spirit of 1917! My blood tingled at the 
thought that even if I wasn't going to be among the 
first to fight for freedom, Jack was ! I was exalted by 
a patriotic fervor stimulated by these flags and 
posters. I yearned to go and do something myself — 
right off — "now" — "to-day" — not at a desk in some 
administrative building but with a rifle over my 
shoulder, the smell of powder in the air, and my feet 
on the muddy turf. 

Then I gloomily realized that if my heart were 
young, my arteries were old ! Nevertheless, I assured 
myself, they were not so old as Joffre's by nearly 
twenty years ! Or Cadorna's ! As far as fitness went 
I believed that I was perfectly sound — the only differ- 
ence was that under a prolonged strain I wouldn't last 
as long probably as a younger chap — a purely theoreti- 

98 



MY FRIENDS 

cal limitation. To every intent and purpose I was 
as vigorous as my son. After all, I was really a young 
man. I had climbed Fusiama only eight months be- 
fore, had tramped for days through the Philippines 
and the Idas Adjacentes, and every year of the last 
ten I had hunted either Rocky Mountain sheep or elk 
among the Shoshones. I was as hard as nails, unad- 
dicted in excess to alcohol or tobacco, could carry a 
sixty-pound pack for hours along a New Brunswick 
portage or tote my half of a canoe with any French- 
Canadian voyageur. No, I was all right! Yet, here 
I was wandering around Wall Street ! 

It was almost with relief — a sensation of needed 
vindication — that I found myself being warmly shaken 
by the hand by Arthur Pulham, a stock-brokering 
friend of mine with offices on the ground floor of a 
Broad Street building. He is a big, husky chap about 
forty-three years old, with pink cheeks, weighs nearly 
two hundred pounds, and has shoulders like Sam- 
son's. He spends his summers sailing a racing-yacht 
on Narragansett Bay and always goes tarpon-fishing 
in the spring — a crank about outdoor life, with a keen 
sense of the value of money — who, in spite of a curi- 
ous pantheistic materialism, had a lot of good points, 
and whom I could count on in trouble as a friend. 

"Weill Well! John !" he cried heartily. "You 
back ! I am glad to see you 1 Tell me all about your- 
self ! How is Helen? And the boy? Oh, of course, 

99 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

he'd be with the colors ! Great luck for the lad, eh ? 
Wish I was his age ! Come around to the office and 
smoke a cigar?" 

I was glad to see him and, having nothing to do, 
followed him into the customer's room, which was 
filled with a heterogeneous crowd lounging in chairs 
in front of a quotation-board. The market was active 
and depressed and prices were changing with great 
rapidity. Pulham pushed me into his private office 
and pulled to the door. Then he shoved toward 
me a box of expensive cigars, helped himself to one, 
lighted it, and leaned back comfortably in his arm- 
chair. 

"Well, old man!" he repeated. "I sure am glad 
to see you once more ! How do you find business?" 

"Isn't any," I answered, smiling. "But from the 
look of things outside there you don't seem to be 
troubled that way." 

He took a satisfied pull on his cigar. 

"No," he said, "business is pretty good! Pretty, 
pretty good ! " He leaned toward me confidentially. 

"You see," he imparted to me with a tremor of 
egotism which he could not conceal, "I doped this 
all out nearly two years ago. In the first place, all my 
people got in on the 'War Babies' — Bethlehem Steel, 
Crucible, General Motors, and so on — and then I had 
a hunch that, whether the war lasted much longer or 
not, there would be some bad times and I told every- 

100 



MY FRIENDS 

body to sell. In a word, we were bears when war 
was declared and we've been bears ever since. A 
fellow can't lose in this market — all he's got to do is 
to sell a few thousand short with his eyes shut — that 
is, if he has a little real courage." 

"A little real courage!" I half murmured. Was it 
the cigar-smoke that made me feel queer? Pulham 
didn't notice. 

"It's the only sure way to make money," he con- 
tinued. " Business conditions are terrible ! The rail- 
roads are in a shocking state ! It's criminal the way 
the commission is treating 'em. It's bound to mean 
government ownership sooner or later. It's a safe 
bet to sell this market from now on." 

"But all business isn't so bad, is it?" I inquired, 
more to make conversation than anything. 

"I should say not. The money some fellows have 
made is enough to make you sick — positively sick! I 
know one that has made twenty millions since August, 
1914." 

"Twenty millions !" 

" Tw-en-ty ! Count 'em ! Any number of fellows 
have just coined it — all luck, of course — just happened 
to be in the right thing — chemicals, rubber, machin- 
ery, munitions. There's a chap up-stairs who was do- 
ing business in 1914 with one room and an office boy. 
Now he has the whole floor — twenty-two offices. Lit- 
eral truth! Some expansion — what?" 

101 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"Where is Dixon?" I asked, looking through the 
office door of the adjoining office. 

"Dixon? Left us. Gone across to France in the 
Red Cross." 

"That's fine!" said I warmly. 

"Yes — fine I" he echoed. "Splendid, isn't it, the 
way the fellows are volunteering? Everybody's do- 
ing something, you know! Even those who can't 
find a job in Washington are doing their bit right 
here at home — one way or another — Liberty Loan, 
Y. M. C. A., Red Cross, or something. I'd give my 
eyes to go across if only I was the right age. But 
they don't want us old fellows on the other side !" 

"I suppose you could have gone to Plattsburg and 
got an officer's commission, couldn't you?" I hazarded. 

"Oh, possibly," he acceded with a slight frown, 
"but there's the family! You can't go and leave a 
wife and five children, now, can you? Besides," he 
hurried on without giving me a chance to reply, " I've 
tried my best to get a job where what ability I have 
can be utilized, but I can't find a place, to save my 
life. I've tried the War Department, the Navy De- 
partment, and written to Hoover, but all any of *em 
can offer me is some clerical work that an office boy 
could do. Now, if they'd put me on a commission " 

I held my peace. 

"You don't know how hard I've worked to find a 
chance to do something — anything to help!" he pro- 

102 



MY FRIENDS 

tested with even more earnestness than the occasion 
would seem to have demanded. 

And then over his desk I noticed for the first time 
that poster of Uncle Sam pointing an accusing finger 
and saying: "I want you!'' 

"No," I admitted truthfully. "I don't suppose I 
do." 

As I strolled back to my own offices the sunlight 
seemed to be a shade less bright than earlier in the 
day. There was Hawkins — a leader of the bar — who 
had thrown up a career and certainly not less than 
thirty thousand a year — and right across the street 
one of his best friends was making money hand over 
fist! 

I found that Lord had not yet returned, and as it 
was nearly lunch-time I called up John Sedgewick and 
asked if my old lunch club was still going. He an- 
swered that it was, only there were now but nine 
members instead of fourteen as formerly, and they no 
longer took a private room but sat at a round table 
in the regular dining-room of the Noonday Club. He 
was just going over, he said. Wouldn't I join him ? 

It was one o'clock as I entered, and I was rather 
surprised to find so few members about. Before I 
went away it had been always crowded to overflowing 
at that hour, but now there were plenty of empty 
tables. Old Thomas, the decrepit doorman, greeted 
me warmly, if sadly. 

103 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"You'll find things a good deal changed, Mr. Stan- 
ton," he sighed. "It's very hard for us to get good 
boys any more in the coat-room. And it's the same 
way with the waiters. They're just a lot of push-cart 
men. The club isn't what it was. This war's an aw- 
ful thing, sir. My daughter's husband, he got blinded 
last July — he was a Canadian, you know, sir, and he 
would go back and enlist !" 

I patted him on the shoulder and passed on to hang 
up my coat and hat. What could I say? Sedgewick 
was waiting for me and we went up-stairs and took our 
seats at the club table. One or two men were already 
there, and the others gradually drifted in. In differ- 
ent parts of the room I counted four members in uni- 
form. It gave me a jolt to see Hibben, the club ra- 
conteur, who always had a crowd of jovial fellows at 
his elbow, in the blue jacket of a lieutenant in the 
navy, talking earnestly to an artilleryman whom I 
recognized as Charley Hackett, heretofore an utterly 
irresponsible bounder, whose matrimonial and other 
difficulties had given him a good deal of rather un- 
pleasant notoriety. I couldn't quite bring myself to 
accept the thing as real. It was as if they were acting 
charades or had stepped out of a rehearsal of private 
theatricals to get a bite of lunch. When, however, 
Fred Thomas, the promoter, one of our own group, 
came in and sat down with us in the uniform of a 
second lieutenant it began to have a tinge of actuality. 

104 



MY FRIENDS 

"You look fine, Fred!" I exclaimed with genuine 
pleasure at the sight of his trim military figure. 

"Well," he drawled, "I begin to feel better." 

"Been laid up?" I asked sympathetically. 

"Oh, no!" he retorted carelessly. "My health's 
been all right enough. You'll understand after you've 
been back awhile. It's just a feeling — half restlessness, 
half ennui. A kind of soul disease, I guess. Nothing 
around here seems worth doing. Hanging around 
Wall Street these days is like playing penny-ante when 
there's a Harvard-Yale football game going on in the 
next lot. It doesn't have the interest it otherwise 
might, you know." 

"That's so!" agreed Kessler, the banker across the 
table, a man of over sixty. "I don't know what we 
fellows that aren't doing anything are coming to. I 
can't get up the slightest excitement over what used to 
thrill me to the marrow. I don't care whether we 
make money or lose it. Damn it all, I don't care 
about anything any more — except to tear the hide off 
those Germans!" 

"Everybody feels the same way," said Sedgewick. 
"What possible difference does it make whether you 
make money or not, or I win a case or not, when 
our friends and our sons and our brothers are going 
off to be shot up or gassed ? You might just as well 
expect a man calmly to sit and play checkers in the 
parlor while a burglar was chloroforming his wife up- 

105 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

stairs preparatory to going through the family safe. 
Some of us have to stay here, but the curse of the 
thing is that those of us who do can never explain why. 
We'll be classed with the swine that are making money 
out of it ! God, some of these fellows make me think 
of a man watching his sister fighting for her honor 
with a tramp and trying to sell a chance to take a pic- 
ture of it to a movie concern ! And, by the Lord, they 
hope (damn them!) that she'll last until the camera 
gets there !" 

He threw down his soup-spoon and glared around 
the table. I had never seen the wizened little lawyer 
under such emotional stress. 

"Oh, forget 'em!" recommended Thomas. "Try 
and think only of us heroes !" he added with humorous 
sarcasm. "Of course it's rotten to make an oppor- 
tunity out of another chap's extremity — and pretty 
nearly treason to take advantage of national adversity 
— a man who sells the market short at such a time as 
this ought to be taken out in front of the Mint and 
shot — but, after all, somebody's got to keep the show 
going at home and a chap mustn't get the idea that, 
just because he'd rather like to wear shoulder-straps 
and get credit for a willingness to give his life for his 
country, Pershing can't get along without him. I used 
to get my living by making a whole lot of people think 
they wanted to buy something for about twice what 
somebody else was willing to sell it for. Now I'm free 

106 



MY FRIENDS 

to satisfy the cravings of my imagination. I shall 
probably sit on a pier and count boxes of bully beef 
for two or three years and curse the day I was bitten 
by the bug of bravery. But suppose I was the editor 
of a paper or a magazine with an audience as big as 
the whole country. Is there any doubt but that, if I 
exerted my influence in the right direction, I could do 
literally a million times more good than if I counted 
those boxes or ripped up a German's abdomen with a 
bayonet?" 

"Of course!" "Quite right!" "Sure!" agreed 
several of the others. 

"Well," continued Rogers with emphasis. "My 
point is this. That editor has no business to enlist or 
to chuck up his job. He belongs where he is. If he 
volunteered it wouldn't be because he honestly thought 
he could serve his country better, but because he was 
afraid that people would think he was a slacker. In 
a word, he'd be a coward — nothing else ! Now I say 
that the really brave man — the patriot — is the chap 
that's big enough to endure the censure of public 
opinion and keep right on working, when instead of a 
chance for the croix de guerre, all he's got a chance of 
getting is a kick in the pants !" 

"Hear! Hear!" cried old Kessler bitterly. "I'd 
rather you'd say that in uniform than some other 
fellow in tennis trousers. Don't preach that doc- 
trine too loud or the country will be swamped with 

107 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

self-abnegators crucified to their present nice little 
jobs!" 

"It's the truth all the same!" shot back Thomas 
defiantly. "For example, the worst danger we have 
got to face is the undermining of our national morale. 
Unless we stamp out sedition here at home — and some- 
body's got to stay here and attend to it — we shall 
just ship our boys over into a shambles that will go on 
forever." 

"Say, you fellows! Cut it out, will you!" re- 
quested Robinson, a cotton-broker, who had two sons 
in France, turning a rather ghastly hue. "This war 
stuff is all right, but, after all, it's lunch-time. Here, 
waiter! Bring us our coffee and some of those new 
domestic cigars that only cost twelve cents apiece." 

Our party broke up a few mmutes later and I found 
to my amazement that it was only half after one. 
Formerly we had spent an hour or more over the 
table. Indeed, it had always taken nearly an hour 
to serve the three or four courses that we inevitably 
had had — our oysters, soup, entree, and dessert. But 
I observed that to-day, with but two exceptions, the 
men had ordered only soup and corn-bread, or 
"crackers and milk" and pie, or some light dish of 
that sort, and although we had lingered as long as we 
wished, we were through in half the usual time. Down 
in the hall I picked up Thomas again and invited him 
to smoke another cigarette before going away. 

108 



MY FRIENDS 

"You can't understand how this, my first morning 
down-town in nearly a year, has got under my skin," 
I told him. " Everything's different ! " 

"Of course it is!" he replied. "We're different, 
too — a good many of us. But there are a lot of us 
who aren't — yet. I suppose it takes people a long 
time to wake up — get going. It took England just as 
long, they say. But, my God, man! This nation as 
a nation isn't plunging into war ! It's ivoding in, one 
foot at a time ! We're about up to our ankles, all nice 
and dry up above. Wait till an ice-cold roller hits us ! " 

"It's hit me already," I hastened to assure him. 
"You see I've come back to these things all at once, 
while the rest of you have had plenty of time to get 
used to them gradually. You seem to have thought 
a lot about it all." 

"Yes," he said, "I have. More than I ever thought 
about anything else in my life before. It came over 
me all at once. It doesn't matter what started it. 
That's personal. I've seen it in a lot of other men, 
too. You're sort of getting ready for it without know- 
ing it — and then it breaks on you suddenly — like Paul 
when he walked unexpectedly into the celestial spot- 
light. I feel now as if I had a sort of mission to go 
around preaching — but, of course, I can't. Yet the 
fierce part of it is that there's generally no fair way 
to tell whether a man is a slacker or not — and all the 
swine take advantage of that fact." 

109 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"But you're looking at it only from the point of 
view of trying to pillory the cowards," I cautioned 
him. " Why not look at it from the other side and be 
glad that the war has brought forward so many men 
one would never have suspected of being the right 
stuff. Why, my regard for human nature has gone up 
a thousand per cent in the past three hours ! " 

He looked at me intently for several moments. 

"By George! You're right," he answered finally. 
"And this war has done a tremendous amount for a 
lot of us fellows who didn't know we needed it. Take 
my own case. I was a successful man. You know 
that, Stanton. I made three hundred thousand dol- 
lars in 1913. I've got a knack for it. I can make 
money any time. And I've been doing the things 
that fellows like me do — playing golf for a hundred 
dollars a hole and racing around over the country in 
big motor-cars and giving my wife all the money to 
put into clothes and jewelry she wanted and all that. 
I thought it was fine! Well, when this war came 
along I saw men whose abilities and bank-accounts 
were ten times as big as mine letting the whole busi- 
ness slide. Why, you know , he's given up a 

hundred-thousand-dollar salary to go down to Wash- 
ington for a dollar a year ! There are dozens of 'em. 
They didn't seem to think the money amounted to a 
row of pins. It set me thinking. Was it ? I asked my- 
self. What was my kind of success worth if fellows 

110 



MY FRIENDS 

just tossed it away like that when something bigger 
came along ? Then it occurred to me that, war or no 
war, there were bigger things coming along all the 
time. Get me? It's fine to drive the boches out of 
Belgium, but it would be fine, too, to drive poverty 
and crime and disease out of America! It was an 
absolutely new idea to me. Yet John D. has had it all 
the time ! Give the old man his due. And little John, 
too ! And if it's worth throwing away your fortune — 
and your life, maybe — for one good cause, it's worth 
while throwing 'em away for another; see?" 

I nodded. This was queer stuff for a Wall Street 
promoter to put across after a midday lunch at the 
club — stuff that was a little too abstract for my mood. 
Here was Rogers making plans for what he was going 
to do after the war — if he wasn't killed — while I ! 

"That's a pretty fine idea, Rogers!" I agreed. 
"But no matter what they do hereafter I must 
say that it seems to me that the rich have done 
themselves proud so far in this war! They've 
given their sons and themselves and poured out their 
money like coal running down a chute without a 
quiver ! " 

"You bet!" he assented. "This war has rehabili- 
tated the malefactor of great wealth. It's a funny 
thing. When I was a boy 'riches and honor' were 
more or less synonymous. But latterly in America 
the possessors of great fortunes have found them- 

111 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

selves more or less objects of suspicion. Ever since 
the insurance investigation and the good old muck- 
raking days the millionaire has been under a cloud. 
If he gave away a couple of millions to a hospital or 
a college he was always charged with trying to buy 
an honorary degree or salve his conscience, and the 
directors of the institution he was trying to help were 
accused of receiving stolen goods. 'Tainted money!' 
A million dollars, I guess, always carries a slight 
guilty feeling along with it! No one can earn a mil- 
lion dollars. I always felt that way about my pro- 
motion profits! That, I suppose, is the significance 
of the word fortune. Until recently the puzzle of the 
rich has been how to get rid of their money with honor. 
Now they've got their chance. They're taking advan- 
tage of it, too. They're unloading it on Uncle Sam 
— and Belgium — and France — and Poland. They're 
all right!" 

"Of course," I interjected, "the rich can afford to 
do it. They've got the money to give. And a lot of 
'em won't miss it so very much at that !" 

"True," he answered. "But they're giving it, 
aren't they ? You don't belittle the act of the fireman 
who saves a woman because he happens to be a fire- 
man and to have the ladder. The rich were lucky to 
have the money. Let's give 'em credit for giving it 
away. I tell you this war is going to make the rich 
respectable again. They had lost caste. They were 

112 



MY FRIENDS 

going down. It gave 'em a chance to get back. But 
apart from the giving of money, the rich haven't been 
behind the poor in offering to serve under the flag 
either. Oh, this war is doing a lot to wipe out the 
distrust of wealth. And the real underlying reason is 
that it's teaching the fellows who have made the 
money that it isn't of very much use to them unless 
they do something with it that's worth while for every- 
body else." 

"There won't be much class feeling left when we 
get through, I fancy," I dared to assert. "With the 
poor man's boy and the capitalist's son fighting side 
by side they'll find out each other's good points and 
they'll remember them when they come back. The 
* brotherhood of man' will mean something. It's the 
soldier's choice of honor rather than life' that wUl 
make them all gentlemen together, and they won't 
stand for seeing the ideals they bled for going by the 
board. They'll fight for them at home, just as they 
did in France!" 

"What you say about the 'choice of honor rather 
than life' is very true," he returned thoughtfully. 
"What a wonderful thing it is that every man of us 
has the same opportunity for the supreme sacrifice I 
The same great prize — the same immortal glory ! It 
makes no difference whether a fellow has made a suc- 
cess or failure of his life up to this time, he has the 
same chance as anybody else — to give all he's got. 

113 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

And nobody can give more. He's the equal in that 
respect of the greatest genius or statesman in the 
land ! If you asked me who were the happiest men 
around to-day I should unhesitatingly reply, 'the 
failures.' This war is the opportunity of the unsuc- 
cessful. No matter how much a man may have foozled 
his life, he can retrieve himself by a single act — in the 
twinkling of an eye. When a chap dies out on No 
Man's Land nobody is going to ask whether he 
made money or not before the war. They won't 
inquire whether he lived well or ill. Whatever his 
past may have been, he will have atoned for all his 
sins." 

He took a long breath surcharged with tobacco. 

"The other evening at the club I happened to ask 
after half a dozen rather notorious 'ne'er-do-wells' of 
my acquaintance, and learned that every one was, or 
had been, at the front. One was chasing submarines 
in the North Sea in command of his own converted 
yacht — in danger every moment of being torpedoed — 
two others, men of over fifty, were driving ambulances 
on the firing-line, three had joined the Lafayette 
Escadrille and were risking their lives daily in the air, 
and the last — Thompson — had died at the head of his 
men leading a charge at Neuve Chapelle. 

" ' Poor old Thompson ! ' I said. 

" ' Lucky old Thompson, you mean ! ' retorted the 
fellow I was talking with. There were bitter tears in 

114 



MY FRIENDS 

his eyes. *I was going with him — only — dammit — 
my bad heart threw me out!'" 

As I threaded my way through the crowd back to 
the office I realized the truth of what Rogers had said. 
This was the salvation of the failure. 

How many fellows we have known who in another 
age might have risen to supreme heights, through 
strength or bravery, but who for one reason or another 
didn't fit into the scheme of modern life! Either 
they have plodded dumbly along, making failure 
after failure in business or at the professions, or have 
hung about doing nothing, if not actually engaged in 
dissipation. They had no place on a city pavement 
between rows of brown-stone dwellings. Theirs was 
the realm of sea and sky — gentlemen adventurers, buc- 
caneers — cavemen, if you choose. Now they have 
come into their own. They have found themselves. 
They can follow the gleam over the "uttermost pur- 
ple rim." They can challenge the rest of mankind in 
bravery. Good luck to them ! 

So, likewise, the war has opened the eyes of the 
successful man. It has suddenly jarred him into the 
realization that after twenty or thirty years of toiling 
he has really no more to offer his country than his 
totally unsuccessful brother. He is up against the 
eternal verities. Once he has on khaki and faces the 
probability that at the same time next year he will be 

115 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

lying under a little wooden cross on the outskirts of 
some village of northern France, he will wonder, if he 
never wondered before, whether his so-called success 
was worth the price he paid for it. He will see things 
in their true relation to one another. He will wish 
devoutly that he had lived more as he went along and 
less in anticipation, and he will envy the poor devil 
that he used to scorn because he only earned a couple 
of thousand dollars a year, although he had a jolly 
good time doing it. But, success or failure, they are 
all coming forward. 

There has never been a more inspiring response to 
the call of patriotism in the history of the world. 
Men who are on the point of achieving their highest 
ambitions are nevertheless ready to scrap their suc- 
cess at the call of duty, well knowing that it is a trivial 
thing to themselves and to their families compared 
to having their names upon their country's roll of 
honor. Their real success lies not in what they have 
done in the world but in their ability to recognize its 
true value. It is a glorious refutation of the cabal 
that we are a nation of materialists and money- 
grubbers. The man who counts his assets in dollars 
will discover that dollars no longer count. He will 
perceive the futility of his ambition to live in a forty- 
foot instead of a seventeen-foot house, and to have 
three automobiles Instead of one. It will lead him to 
a consideration of what he will do with his life. He 

116 



MY FRIENDS 

will cease to measure his happiness by his bank- 
account. He will find out that he has a soul as well 
as a stomach; and even if this does not send him into 
the trenches it may result in his doing something for 
the service of mankmd. 

I found my partner sitting dejectedly at his desk, 
looking about as cheerful as an undertaker upon his 
introductory visit. 

"What's the matter?" I demanded. "Miss Peter- 
son told me that you had just sold a block of bonds. 
It didn't use to make you feel that way !" 

He held up a slip of paper. It was a check for a 
hundred thousand dollars. I knew our profits would 
be about five thousand. 

"What's the trouble with you?" I inquired, as I 
pulled out my pipe (I didn't know any easier way to 
save a dollar a day than to give up cigars) and leaned 
back in my chair. 

He swung around and looked at me rather dis- 
gustedly. 

"I don't want to make any more money!" he re- 
marked. 

"What!" I exclaimed. Such a statement was pre- 
posterous coming from Lord. 

"I mean it," he said seriously. "It sickens me to 
be trying to sell securities at a time like this! It's 
like playing the fiddle with Rome burning. Every- 
body has been doing a lot of thinking lately, I guess. 

117 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

What I've been asking myself is, What are we doing 
for the country?" 

"We furnish," I repeated reminiscently, "an im- 
portant and necessary Hnk between capital and in- 
vestment, a market for the distribution of money. 
We enable the small investor to contribute easily and 
safely to the development of industry!" 

Lord gave a hollow laugh. 

"We are about as useful at the present Juncture 
as dealers in Punch and Judy shows ! " 

"Don't you think," I asked with mock impressive- 
ness, "that we are an important link " 

"We're the missing link between utter uselessness 
and the pretense of activity !" he cried bitterly. "No, 
no. Don't fool yourself ! This bond-shop is only an 
excuse for you and me to come down-town and not to 
do something else." 

"What else?" I asked curiously. 

"Anything!" he almost shouted. "We bond and 
stock brokers are nothing but parasites just now. 
We're about on a par with theatre-ticket speculators. 
I'm getting tired of sitting here kicking my heels when 
there's so much big work to be done. It's all right 
for you — you've been away out of the darn thing; 
but stay here awhile! I'm all ready to fly the coop." 

" Look here, old man ! " I expostulated. " You 
mustn't talk that way. One would think you were on 
the point of giving up business and going into the 
trenches." 

118 



MY FRIENDS 

"Pm thinking of it," he replied. 

"But you've got a wife and child !" I returned. 

"Wife and child ! Wife and child I" he ground out 
bitterly. " * Ich habe weih und kind zu haus ' ! My 
wife's got an independent income and you know it. 
My child is thirteen years old and is a beneficiary 
under her grandfather's trust estate to the extent of 
five thousand dollars per year. I'm thirty-nine years 
old and the champion golfer of my county ! Of course 
I can sit here like a stuffed dove and look pained when 
any real man comes along, and get off the customary 
sad rot about how hard I've tried to *do something' 
but nobody'U have me, and how Washington is over- 
flowing with men of my class holding down clerical 
Jobs. That's the most miserable sort of camouflage. 
There isn't a fitter man than I to go into the trenches 
to-day. I've waited until you got back — ^as Morris 
was away — but now I can face the thing squarely. At 
the present time I'm a slacker — that's all ! A slacker 
— nothing else!" 

He got up nervously and thrust his hand through 
his hair. 

"I give you two weeks to feel just as I do. Of 
course I couldn't chuck the business with everybody 
away. I had to stick to the ship. So I worked the 
old 'wife and child' racket and snivelled around about 
how I'd give my eyes to go abroad — but couldn't ! I 
would give my eyes to go — that's God's own truth I 
But that I carCt go is a damn lie! I've fought this 

119 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

thing out with myself and it's clear as daylight. The 
world has got to be saved from those German brutes 
and it's everybody's job to go to it and clean 'em up 
— unless he is physically incapacitated. It's the old 
distinction between legal and moral obligation. If 
you see your neighbor's baby crawling on the railroad 
track in front of an express-train and you can save it 
merely by putting out your hand and yanking it out 
of the way, you have no legal obligation to do so. 
Well, I haven't any legal obligation to do my bit on 
the other side, either." 

"Great Scott!" I replied. "I've got to have a 
chance to think. Why couldn't you have waited a 
day or two before springing all this on me?" 

He turned and looked at me earnestly. 

"It would be all the same," he protested. "Sooner 
or later — I'm going. I'm not going to see the rail- 
road train run down the child without doing what I 
can to save it." 

There was an expression almost of exaltation on 
his face. What curious things the war did to people ! 
I looked out of the window with my brain awhirl. 
Flapping lazily on its pole hung our service-flag with 
its three stars. There was room enough for more. 
With a sudden impulse I turned and held out my hand 
to him : 

"You're right, old man! To hell with the busi- 
ness ! " I cried. 

120 



IV 

MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

Out of space — as infinite as the remotest star, as 
cold as the wind that blows between the worlds, and 
as black as the primordial darkness that covered the 
face of the waters at the creation of the earth — I 
heard the faint, persistent, mufHed ringing of a bell. 
At first, in fact for some time, I lay there comfortably 
in that detached, impersonal, superior fashion so 
familiar to those who see other fellows' houses burning 
up or other fellows' wives running off with their best 
friends. Some poor devil had forgotten his latch-key, 
probably, or some unfortunate physician was needed 
sooner than had been expected ! 

I turned over and tried to go to sleep again, then a 
cold chill broke out upon my face, and I started up in 
bed, straining my ears for that ominous, distant — now 
quite personal — sound. It was my own telephone — 
three stories below ! Jack ! My God ! Jack ! Had 
Yaphank been blown up ? Or had they shipped him 
off without my knowing it and the transport been tor- 
pedoed ? Bzz-zz-zz ! 

121 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

Trembling violently I switched on the night light 
and threw on my wrapper as quietly as I could, so 
as not to arouse Helen, who was sleeping in the next 
room. My little Jack! My only son! I stumbled 
out into the hall and down the stairs like a drunken 
man, fearful to answer that mandatory summons, but 
equally apprehensive lest it might cease before I could 
do so. 

Bz-zz-zz-ZZ-ZZ ! The change in the size of type 
illustrates the effect produced upon my sleep-drugged 
ears as I pushed open the pantry door. 

"Hello!" I answered huskily. "Hello! What is 
it?" 

"Is Mrs. Stanton there?" inquired a metallic female 
voice. 

"This is Mister Stanton," I replied. "Give me the 
message." 

"I must speak to Mrs. Stanton!" retorted the per- 
son at the other end of the wire. 

"If it's any bad news — " I choked. "Please — 
teW—me!" 

"Oh, it isn't any bad news! I'm sorry if I fright- 
ened you," said SHE, for that is the only typograph- 
ical method of describing this authoritative lady. 
"But I want Mrs. Stanton at once. I need her at the 
Permsylvania Station." 

Me. "What the — ! How do you mean? What 
are you talking about? She's sound asleep in bed!" 

122 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

SHE. "Naturally! This is Miss Pritchett talk- 
ing, chairwoman of your wife's Committee of the 
Local Canteen. She's under orders, you know. We've 
fifteen hundred soldiers coming in from Spartanburg 
at four o'clock and it's now two fifty-five. I've got 
to get thirty women down there to feed those men in 
an hour, Mrs. Stanton among them. I shall see that 
the food is there." 

Me. "But — ! How on earth! You can't expect 
my wife to get up in the middle of the night and go 
down to the Pennsylvania Station ! You're crazy ! " 

SHE (icily) . " Will— you— kindly— transmit— the— 
order — to — your — wife ? " 

Me. " Look here, Miss Whateveryournamels ! You 
must have got hold of the wrong Stanton — " I 
stopped abruptly, confronted by the peculiar opaque- 
ness of sound that clothes a transmitter when the 
other party has hung up. 

" Well !" I remarked to the alarm-clock on the shelf. 
"What do you think of that !" 

Well, what did I think of it ? I didn't know what I 
thought of it. Miss Whateverhernamewas seemed to 
know very definitely what she was talking about — but 
to arouse my wife at three a. m., even if she had been 
careless enough to allow her name to be used on a 
committee, and send her chasing off across the city 
was inconceivable ! 

I found a tin box of cigarettes, lit one, and sat down 
123 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

on the ice-box. The business just showed how foolish 
it was for anybody to get mixed up with things one 
didn't know anything about. Canteen ! Imagine 
Helen — far more gentle and retiring than her name- 
sake of Troy (Asia Minor) — trying to hustle coffee- 
cans and sandwich-trays for a lot of rookies who would 
probably yell at her as if she were a barmaid. It 
wasn't decent! It wasn't possible — absolutely not 
possible! Imagme some one calling my wife 
"Birdie"! 

" No ! " said I sternly to the alarm-clock. " If there 
isn't any mistake, there ought to be ! That antique 
Amazon can get along without Helen. I'm going back 
to bed." 

Having reached this most sensible decision I opened 
the ice-chest, took a couple of bites out of an apple 
that I found there, drank half a glass of milk, and 
slowly climbed up the stairs again. Helen was look- 
ing over the banisters. 

"What is it?" she queried sharply. "Anything 
about Jack?" 

"Oh, no — it's nothing!" I replied, taking a final 
pull on my cigarette. " Nothing at all ! Let's go to 
bed!" 

She eyed me suspiciously. 

"Who was it?" she demanded. 

"Oh, some woman — I didn't get the name." 

"What did she want?" 

124 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

It was no use ! 

"She said that she wanted you to go and help feed 
a lot of soldiers over at the Pennsylvania " 

Helen — the elegant Helen! — had suddenly become 
galvanized ! 

"Miss Pritchett— it was Miss Pritchett!" she al- 
most shouted. "My captain! Order me a taxi, will 
you?" 

Already she had hurried back to her bedroom. 

"Taxi? You don't mean you're going " 

"Of course I'm going !" 

"There'll be plenty of women " 

"I'll be one of them." 

"Helen," I expostulated. "You mustn't do this 
kind of thing. You're not fitted for it! You're not 
strong enough, to begin with. And you won't know 
how to handle that kind of people. The sort of woman 
that is needed to feed a lot of soldiers is a — a — mas- 
culine sort of woman — like Miss Pritchett!" 

I was shouting through the door now. 

A subdued laugh came from inside. "Be a good 
boy — order my taxi!" 

"Hanged if I wUI!" 

The door opened just a crack. 

"John, you goose, don't you realize I've got to go? 
I'm pledged to. I'd be forever disgraced if I didn't. 
Besides, I want to! Please order me a taxi. If you 
don't, I'll be late. I'm almost dressed !" 

125 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

Almost dressed I Five minutes! Usually Helen 
took fifty I 

"You're crazy!" I retorted. "Of course, if you 
insist, I'll order a taxi, but I'm not going to have you 
go over there alone at this time of night. It isn't 
decent. I'm going with you !" 

"Then you'd better get started!" she laughed, 
"instead of standmg there talking, in your pajamas. 
Come ahead ! It will probably do you good. Besides, 
it will give you a chance to meet Miss Pritchett." 

Fuming, and still more than half asleep, I telephoned 
for a taxi and hurriedly began to dress, but long be- 
fore I was ready the motor was at the door and Helen 
was calling to me from the front hall to hurry up. As 
I came down-stairs I noticed that she had on a brown 
military cap with a small red emblem above the visor. 
I hate anything conspicuous or ostentatious, but it 
was so becoming to her that I held my peace. Be- 
sides, this sudden call — in the middle of the night — 
once one was fully aroused — ^had something rather 
romantic and thrilling about it. She intercepted and 
interpreted my glance, however. 

"It's the regular canteen imiform," she explained. 
"It helps a lot in a crowd. People understand who 
you are and let you by." 

Up in the blue alley between the housetops the stars 
snapped in the crisp, keen air. A pale-greenish ef- 
florescence suffused the sky across the park and marked 

126 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

where glowed the as yet undimmed lights of Broad- 
way. The city was still save now and then for the 
subdued clang of a surface-car and the rumble that, 
like a giant pulse, throbs in its arteries night and day. 
I felt the stimulus of the unusual, the excitement of 
being abroad before the dawn while the rest of the 
world slept. But Helen had stepped into the taxi 
and I clambered in after her as quickly as I could. 

"Where to, sir?" asked the driver as he closed the 
door. 

"To the Pennsylvania Station," replied Helen be- 
fore I could answer. "And please hurry!" 

As we passed the illuminated clock in front of the 
Hotel Netherlands the hands pointed to twenty min- 
utes to four. Straight ahead for a mile or more the 
street-lamps drew away in a long parallel until they 
merged far below us in the glow of Forty-second Street. 
The smooth asphalt reflected the lights of our taxi as 
if wet with rain. No one was abroad. The sidewalks 
and roadway were bare of traflSc. We had the city to 
ourselves. Was it possible that we were on our way 
to meet fifteen hundred young crusaders sworn to 
rescue Europe from the clutches of a military despot- 
ism? It was as difficult to believe as that millions of 
men had died or been wounded in that same cause. 
We knew it, yet we didn't know it ! The men whom 
Helen was going to meet to-day might be floating 
dead in mid-ocean before the week was out. 

127 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

It occurred to me as we whirred down Fifth Avenue 
that the last time Helen and I had been out at such 
an hour together was when we had come home from 
the Highbilts' dinner-dance in February, 1914. Not 
since that grand affair had we been invited to any 
elaborate function. The concussion of the conflict 
had demolished the strongholds of American society 
much as the German siege-guns at the beginning of 
the war had levelled the fortresses of Liege and Na- 
mur and the garrisons had been driven out to mingle 
with the rest of the population — many of them for 
the first time on equal terms. 

I had always deplored the fact that Helen, along 
with most of the other American women of her type, 
in spite of her keen intelligence and bodily vigor had 
been content to remain in a state of ignorance and in- 
activity so far as current affairs were concerned. She 
had been quite satisfied with her friends, her family, 
her social life. She was a "perfect lady" and her cir- 
cle was composed of "perfect ladies." She had not 
wanted to meet any others, for she had had nothing 
in common with them. They hadn't entered into her 
cosmos. Helen's world had consisted exclusively of 
rich women, upper servants, and high-class shopkeepers. 
She had had no social relations with the kind of women 
w^ho went to market in the morning. She had had 
an instinctive feeling that it was mean to care what it 
cost to run the house or to ask the price of anything. 

128 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

She had never seen the butcher, the groceryman, or 
her own kitchen-maid — except the day she had en- 
gaged her. She had shrunk from any contact with 
people Hke street-car conductors, ticket-sellers, or 
taxicab-drivers. She had been so protected all her life 
that it had caused her acute suffering to talk to any- 
body whose point of view wasn't perfectly familiar 
to her beforehand. She had viewed women who " went 
in" for suffrage, temperance, or other movements as 
freakish or notoriety-seekers. She had held woman's 
place to be not so much in the home as in the drawing- 
room. In a word, even if not in the words of the 
hynm a "broken and useless vessel," she had been 
nevertheless a thing apart, whose value lay, if any- 
where, in her very inutility — a " sensitive plant," mov- 
ing in an atmosphere more rarefied than that of a 
noblewoman at the time of the French Revolution. 
Sometimes I have wondered if this war has not saved 
her from the guillotine. Anyhow, it has saved her 
from herself. 

We had not been back in New York a month before 
I observed an extraordinary change in Helen's point 
of view. In the first place, as she had no motor she 
was obliged to make use of public conveyances, and, 
although at first she walked in preference to so doing, 
she soon so exhausted herself that she had no choice 
in the matter. How are the mighty fallen ! Helen 
a. strap-hanger! Her next discovery was that the 

129 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

butcher was really a very well-meaning human being 
who would much rather transact his business with her 
than with her cook. She now confesses that she looks 
forward to her morning excursion to Third Avenue as 
one of the most interesting features of her day. More- 
over, as she has fewer servants she is compelled to see 
more of them and to pay more attention to the way 
they perform their duties. She has incidentally 
learned that they have feelings of their own and are 
not the hostile automata that she supposed. Indeed, 
she now finds that there are no less than nine brothers 
and cousins of our small family of domestics fighting 
with the Allies and that two have already been killed. 
You can't say "Home, James!" with quite the same 
inflection or with your nose quite so high in the air 
when James's only brother got a machine-gun bullet 
through his heart only last week at Poelcappelle. It 
makes a vast difference, too, when you find the girls 
in the kitchen ready and eager to roll bandages and 
knit sweaters. Up to this time the sisterhood of women 
has always seemed more theoretical than the brother- 
hood of man. The ordinary lady of fashion has al- 
ways had her butler and chauffeur standing on guard 
between her and the world. And now those guards 
are gone — at least ours are. 

A year ago I should have been inclined to believe 
that Helen couldn't have changed, that her attitude 
toward life would have been as immutable as the ex- 

130 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

pression upon the face of a graven image. Offhand 
one would have agreed with Mrs. Putnam when in 
her analysis of "The Lady" she says: "Sentimentally 
the lady has established herself as the criterion of a 
community's civilization. Very dear to her is the ob- 
servance that hedges her about. In some subtle way 
it is so bound up with her self-respect and with her 
respect for the man who maintains it, that life would 
hardly be sweet to her without it. When it is flatly 
put to her that she cannot become a human being and 
yet retain her privileges as a non-combatant, she often 
enough decides for etiquette." 

There is a student of women speaking about women, 
and yet her generalization has been proved an error 
only seven years after her book was written. The 
ladies of America haven't decided in "favor of eti- 
quette" — with one accord they have chosen to become 
human bemgs. 

While it is true, as Mrs. Putnam says, that "a lady 
may become a nun in the strictest and poorest order 
without altering her view of life, without the moral 
convulsion, the destruction of false ideas, the truth of 
character that would be the preliminary steps toward 
becoming an efficient stenographer," nevertheless that 
convulsion has occurred and all over the country 
women of every class are rallying to the call of "Ser- 
vice." The millionaire's wife is working side by side 
with the grocer's daughter, the music-teacher, and the 

131 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

seamstress, at the Red Cross building, the "rest huts," 
and "hostess houses" of the Y. M. and Y. W.C. A., 
the canning-kitchens, the canteens, in the Food Ad- 
ministration's house-to-house canvas, and in the thou- 
sand and one other activities which they can carry on 
so much better than men. The woman power of the 
United States is being mobilized with extraordinary 
rapidity. Already the women of New York have 
demonstrated their effectiveness in the State military 
census which was carried on by a volunteer body of 
five thousand women workers. There are in the 
United States probably ten million women who could 
take the places of men with the colors or engaged 
in war work. Another ten million are able to help. 
It would not take long, if it were necessary, for this 
great reserve army of twenty million women to be- 
come almost as efficient as the women of England 
are to-day. It should mean that the United States 
can send as many men as will he needed to insure 
the defeat of the Central Powers without a vital re- 
duction in producing power, however large that num- 
ber may be. But better than beating Germany is the 
democratizing effect which this common service is 
having upon the women who are sharing in it. 

It is teaching the women of leisure that there is no 
play which is half as much fun as real work and that 
the people who are doing something are vastly more 
interesting than those who aren't. It is teaching the 

132 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

worker that the society woman has her good points, 
and that the main trouble with her is that, never hav- 
ing had any contact with the edges of life, she doesn't 
know how to act along with real folks. It is teaching 
all of them that when it comes to service the only thing 
that counts is delivering the goods, and it is bringing 
into the limelight a lot of extraordinarily able women 
of all classes. 

The striking feature of this wholesale transmog- 
rification is the ease and rapidity with which women, 
like Helen, have sloughed off the skin of their con- 
ventionality, shed all their pretenses and affectations, 
and plunged in medias res as if they had never done 
anything else all their lives. They remind me some- 
how of chickens who have felt the tingle of life and 
suddenly cracked through their shells — they are just 
as keen to get busy. Helen had no sooner put her 
house in order than she became passionately interested 
in everything that other women were doing. A year 
ago she would have retired from the world in shame 
rather than have a "Votes for Women" poster exhib- 
ited in our front window. It is there now, however, 
along with the sign manual of the Food Administration 
and a "Service" placard showing the American woman 
as a modern Joan of Arc against a background of the 
Stars and Stripes. I'm proud of all those cards and 
posters. I'm proud of what Helen is doing and of the 
spirit that makes her want to make public declaration 

133 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

of her principles. But it is so sudden! Yet every- 
thing is sudden these days. I suppose the earthquake 
has simply shaken the frosting off the facade, leaving 
exposed the solid stone and cement of American 
womanhood. 

There's a new community spirit abroad. It's great 
sport, when it comes to putting up cherry jam, for 
Mrs. Angelo, whose husband runs the barber-shop at 
the summer resort on Long Island, to put it all over 
Mrs. Robinson, whose husband controls fifty-one per 
cent of the independent steel companies of America. 
But Mrs. Angelo has an unfair advantage — she learned 
how as a girl in Palermo. Her forty cans make poor 
Mrs. Robinson's thirteen look Hke thirty cents. Just 
so that Mrs. Robinson won't feel badly about it she 
gives her a friendly pat on the arm and an encourag- 
ing smile. 

Then there is Aunt Silena Pratt who walks in to 
town from down the road three miles twice every 
week — a vigorous old lady whose taciturn disposition 
has given her rather a lonely time of it heretofore. 
You should see Aunt Silena and Mrs. Trust Company 
Thompson hit it off together. When Mrs. T. was Miss 
Althea Onderdonk up in Athens, New York, she had an 
Aunt Sally who was a "dead ringer" for Aunt Silena. 
It makes, no difference to Althea now that Silena 
doesn't wear corsets and says "You was" and "She 
ain't." If any grocer held out the sugar on them 

134 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

they would all — as a bunch — with hearts beating as one, 
march in a committee of the whole to the offending 
store and — well, you remember what happened to old 
Floyd Ireson at the hands of the women of Marble- 
head! 

And the significant thing is that they are keeping 
it up. It was inspiring to see them go to it, but it is 
astounding to see them still at it. They have got theu* 
teeth in it and don't intend to let go until the struggle 
is over and won. The war is bringing out a lot of 
women whom the world had forgotten, even if they 
had not "the world forgot" — which a good many of 
them had. There is my cousin Minnie, for instance. 
Minnie is fifty-three years old and lives by herself in 
a boarding-house on Madison Avenue. She is a well- 
educated, intelligent, and capable woman, but she 
never married, and sinc^ she belongs to the generation 
that believed it wasn't the thing for women to have 
occupations, has never done anything except to take 
trips abroad with spinster friends and make herself 
generally useful to her relatives. If any one of the 
family is sick we are apt to ask Minnie up to help us; 
if Helen and I want to go out West we send for Min- 
nie to come and stay with the children; if the house 
needs to be cleaned while we are away in the summer 
we get Minnie to keep an eye on it. We are always 
sending for Minnie, or, rather, we were always sending 
for her. Not a very enviable position for a woman — 

135 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

that of a family hanger-on — the poor relative always 
ready to use the opera tickets. Well, you should see 
Cousin Minnie tww. She is the local commandant of 
some organization or other and has her own hangers- 
on — dozens of them. I think she runs something like 
a hundred diet-kitchens — and all the butchers and 
grocers tremble at her approach. She has no time to 
waste on her relatives, for she is one of Hoover's right- 
hand-maidens. She is an authority on cuts, calories, 
and cubic contents. She is living for the first time and 
making things hum. I shouldn't be surprised to see 
her at the head of an Allied Food Conunission. Any- 
how, I take off my hat to Minnie ! 

There are thousands of women Just like her all over 
the United States. They are helping the country and 
helping themselves and each other, too. Starting 
with the making of surgical dressings in 1915 for the 
Allies, the work has gradually broadened until there 
is now hardly anything a woman can't do to help — 
even if she wants to become a letter-carrier or a yeo- 
man in the United States navy. 

It is all very well to say that it is "the fashion." 
Fashion might make it easier to start, but nothing less 
than patriotism would lead the women to keep on. 

I thought of these things as I studied Helen's alert 
face under the flitting lights of the arc-lamps. It 
seemed to me that she looked ten years younger. It 
may have been her cap, but I thought she looked pret- 

136 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

tier than I had ever known her to be since we had 
been married. Speeding through the sleeping city I 
realized all over again that I was in love with my wife, 
and I had a curious sensation that I was eloping with 
her out of an old life into a new. 

It was ten minutes to four as we rolled up to the 
curb at the Pennsylvania Station. No red-capped 
porters sprang forward to relieve us of our bags; no 
pompous oflficials watched our movements with cour- 
teous condescension. The brilliantly lighted concourse 
was empty save for a few bent heads partially visible 
through the wmdows of the ticket-offices. 

"They must all be down on the platforms already !" 
exclaimed Helen, hurrying toward the gates. " I hope 
we're not late ! " 

The guardian at the head of the steps saluted as his 
eye caught Helen's cap. 

"The train isn't m yet, miss," he remarked en- 
couragingly. "The other ladies are below on the 
platform." 

It began to look like business. 

"Guess I'll come with you," I hazarded. "May 
I?" 

"You'll have to ask Miss Pritchett," retorted my 
wife. "Maybe she'll let you — if she doesn't bite your 
head of! first!" 

We made our way down to the lower level and 
looked about us. At the farther end a group of per- 

137 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

haps thirty women, all in uniform, were standing 
about some crude plank tables piled high with rolls, 
sandwiches, and fruit, while on two trucks stood four 
huge canisters. The tracks were empty of trains, 
but there was an air of expectancy which indicated 
that we were none too soon. 

"I must get assigned," said Helen, hurrying away. 

I followed in more leisurely fashion. It was up to 
me, I recognized, to make some sort of explanation 
to the female autocrat running this show, and I had, 
unfortunately, to get her permission to remain there 
at all. It was not difficult to find her. There was only 
one woman there who by any possibility could have 
been Miss Pritchett. She — a tall, geometrical woman 
with strong-minded feet — was standing beside one of 
the canisters, and her aggressive profile, with its 
firmly compressed lips, left no doubt in my mind as to 
her identity. 

But they were not all like that. Indeed, between 
Miss Pritchett and myself I descried a slender Artemis, 
whose cap was refusing to remain on her chestnut hair, 
and whose large gray eyes let themselves fall good- 
naturedly upon mine as she tried to force the rebellious 
thing into place. I was glad that I had heard that 
telephone. Surely we were all comrades — even if not 
yet in arms. And there were others, a few of whom I 
knew already. A stout woman with a slight mustache 
and an unmistakably Italian cast of feature, who 

138 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

seemed to be quite at home among the bananas, was 
arranging the fruit-stand. Assisting her was a scho- 
lastic angularity in specs, and beyond, dallying with 
the sandwiches, I perceived two of Margery's friends. 

The platform was crowded with women of every 
sort, from awkward young girls to motherly white- 
haired old ladies, all with an unmistakable air of pur- 
pose. Evidently getting out at four in the morning 
had not proved such an undertaking to them as I 
had assumed that it would be for my wife. There 
were shop-girls, scrub-women, a couple of actresses, 
and others who had no peculiarly distinguishing char- 
acteristics, and among whom — could I be seeing true? 
— an elderly female who strikingly resembled my 
friend Mrs. Highbilt, in an old travelling suit. Shades 
of Fifth Avenue! She signalled with a gloveless 
hand. 

"What are you doing here, you mere man?" she 
cackled genially. 

"Taking lessons from my better half," I admitted. 
"Honestly, Anna, I think this is about the greatest 
thing I've seen since I got back ! " 

She seemed pleased. 

"The women are all right!" she said confidently. 
"AU of them!" 

At that instant we were interrupted by the Italian 
lady, and I turned to render my apologies to my 
nemesis beside the coffee-cans. 

139 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"I must ask your pardon," I began, approaching 
that forbidding personality in considerable embarrass- 
ment, "for the way I answered you over the telephone 
this morning " 

"Telephone?" she interrupted in a resonant hasso 
prof undo. "Telephone! I never spoke to you on the 
telephone in my life." 

" Oh," I exclaimed. " Aren't you Miss Pritchett ? " 

"No," she replied stiffly. "I am not Miss Pritch- 
ett! I am Mrs. Judge Wadbone. My husband is 
one of our Supreme Court justices. That is Miss 
Pritchett — over there!" and she indicated my goddess 
of the erstwhile rebellious hair. "Thank you for the 
compliment — just the same!" she added rather hu- 
morously. 

Any disastrous effect that this thrilling discovery 
might have had upon my future career was prevented 
by a heavy rumbling. The train was coming! In- 
stantly the platform became a hive of activity as 
each woman rushed to her appointed position. The 
rumbling grew louder, the shriek of the brakes rising 
high above its diapason. Soon the train shot out of 
the shadows and ground slowly to a stop beside us. 
Simultaneously every window was pulled up, revealing 
one or more sober bronze faces. 

"It's the th colored regulars!" a musical 

voice shouted in my ear. " Mr. Stanton, do you mind 
handling those coffee-urns ? " It was SHE ! 

140 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

" Anything ! Anything for you ! " I answered tremu- 
lously, as SHE shoved me coffeeward. 

A couple of officers had descended from one of the 
platforms and were saluting our commanding officer. 
I had a fleeting vision of Helen — who had never em- 
ployed a colored man or woman in our house — care- 
fully pouring something from a steaming pitcher into 
a tin cup, which was thrust by a dark-skinned hand 
from a neighboring window. 

"Would you prefer to have the men in company 
formation ? " asked one of the officers. 

"Thanks. Yes. It would be quicker," answered 
Miss Pritchett. 

The major ascended the platform and gave some 
short, sharp orders. There was a loud scuffling, and in 
a moment the men came pouring out of the cars and 
formed company front, facing the train. They were a 
fine-looking lot of fellows, those black patriots ! And 
they held themselves erect with a conscious pride in 
their uniforms that somehow took hold of me as noth- 
ing had for a long time. Strange how the uniform 
wipes out every difference of race or color! Their 
serious, intent faces made me think of those graven 
upon the monument to Robert Gould Shaw on Boston 
Common in memory of the man who was "buried 
with his niggers." 

The company slowly filed down to the end of the 
platform, where each man filled his cup at the coffee- 

141 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

canister and received his sandwiches and fruit, then 
filed back again and into the cars. The sandwiches 
had all vanished — so had the bananas. One of the 
coffee-canisters had been overturned. They had made 
a clean sweep of everything in sight. 

On the platform they had maintained a dignified 
silence, but once back in their seats they all began as 
a matter of course to sing. And how they sang ! 
Their mellow voices floated out through the car win- 
dows and through the station until it echoed like some 
big dimly lighted cathedral to the antiphonies of a 
full choir — camp-meeting hymns like "Swing Low, 
Sweet Chariot," alternating with such by-gone relics 
as "Camptown Races," "I'se Gwine Back to Dixie," 
and "Golden Slippers." Then at a hint from the 
major a quartet of tall, handsome, deep-throated 
lads came out on the platform and gave us a pro- 
gramme of Hampton songs, while all of us, including 
the shop-girls and Mrs. Highbilt, gathered in a crowd 
about them. I've never heard such smging. Neither, 
I bet, have the boches. I believe those fellows will 
drive Fritz out of his trenches to the tune of some 
plantation melody. 

In the midst of "Carry Me Back to Ole Vu-ginny" 
a station-hand came running along the platform and 
said that the train was going to pull out, that they 
were eleven minutes behind time. From inside came 
the sound of a mouth-organ and a chorus of "Where 

142 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

do we go from here, boys? Where do we go from 
here?" 

"All aboard! All aboard!" shouted the tram- 
starter. 

The young major saluted Miss Pritchett again. 

"Thanks a lot!" he said. "The men hadn't had 
anything to eat since three o'clock yesterday after- 
noon." 

"Thank you for the concert!" she answered. 
"They're a fine regiment ! Good luck to you !" 

The song inside changed to a thundering chorus of 
"Onward, Christian Soldiers." The train began to 
slide along the rails and the major stepped up on the 
lowest step of the platform, seemingly loath to go. 

"It's awfully good of you, you know," he added 
feelingly, "to take such a lot of trouble." 

"Not a bit!" she answered. "It's not much I I 
wish it were more !" 

His eyes continued to linger upon her until an in- 
tervening pillar cut off his view. The whole episode 
had not taken more than twenty minutes. Oh, to 
be young ! And to be going ! I was meditating upon 
the misfortunes of being old when I was ordered to 
superintend the refilling of the coffee-urns. Mrs. 
Wadbone was brushing off the tables and Mrs. High- 
bilt was overseeing the efforts of two truckmen who 
were staggering from the other end of the platform 
with a basket of sandwiches. 

143 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"You get the coffee up-stairs in the restaurant," 
ordered Miss Pritchett. "These men will take the 
cans up in the elevator to the main level." 

An official now came down the iron steps from the 
gate. 

"We have just had word that the next train with 
fifteen hundred conscripts from Yaphank has been 
delayed two hours. It will get in about quarter past 
six." 

Miss Pritchett laughed and shrugged her shapely 
shoulders. 

" You'll let us sleep in the waiting-room ? " she asked. 

"The station is yours!" he answered gallantly. 
"It's too bad!" 

"Come on, everybody!'* she called. "Let's go up 
to the restaurant and get some coffee ourselves." 

Miss Pritchett and I pushed six of the small tables 
together, making one large one, and the party sat 
down indiscriminately. I made an excuse for my 
presence by being very active with the coffee and 
sandwiches, and while the kaffee klatsch was in full 
swing found an opportunity to make my apologies to 
Miss Pritchett for my lack of receptivity over the 
telephone. 

"You see," I explained in mitigation of my offense, 
"Helen was the last person in the world I could im- 
agine doing this sort of thing, so I took it for granted 
that you had got the wrong number." 

144 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

"You're not the first husband who has been sur- 
prised in that way recently," she retorted. " Husbands 
seem to be a little incredulous. Maybe that's why they 
elected me chairman — because I'm unencumbered." 

"You ought to round up a couple of thousand hus- 
bands and let them see what you're doing here — it's 
great I" said I warmly. "It might start the husbands 
doing something." 

Miss Pritchett nodded. 

"It's a pity more people don't know the response 
that the women of the country have made," she said. 
"It's really very fine. I know that the men are giving 
their lives and their fortunes without a murmur, but 
numerically they aren't doing as much as the women. 
If you look around you the chances are that for every 
man you know here in New York who is really doing 
something for the war, you will find five times as many 
women doing just as much. The number of women 
of every class who have turned to and helped is quite 
marvellous — and it's growing bigger every day." 

"Splendid!" I exclaimed, conscious that as yet I 
wasn't one of the men who had done anything. " What 
are they doing? What do you think is the most im- 
portant thing they can do?" 

"Well," she replied, "it seems to me that in the 
country and the smaller towns food conservation is 
obviously the best way in which women can help. 
They are right there next to the crops and know how 

145 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

to cook and preserve them. In the cities I should say 
that canteen work, like this, was the most important, 
and next to it social work in and around the camps. 
Of course, if there isn't any camp near by and the city 
is off the route of the troop-trains, the women had better 
do general Red Cross or Y. W. C. A. work, assist the 
Food Administration, or prepare themselves for clerical 
jobs. Most of the women here are helping in the food 
conservation campaign, are liable to be called for 
canteen duty any time, day or night, and are doing 
some other regular work besides. Mrs. Highbilt, for 
example, is indefatigable." 

"Incredible!" I muttered. 

"It's true, nevertheless," answered Miss Pritchett. 
"You can't tell who is going to be the most useful 
person either or where you are going to find the finest 
qualities. Would you believe that Anna Highbilt was 
the most effective canvasser we had in our district in 
getting signatures for food cards? Well, she was! 
And she took more abuse than any one of us !" 

"Abuse?" 

"Yes, abuse. Do you think it was all like taking 
candy from children? Not much! I was actually 
put out of five houses. In one instance the 'lady of 
the house' — her name was Krauskopf, by the way 
— when she heard what I was after, yelled over the 
banisters: 'Throw her out! Slam the door in her 
face!' Any number of them made themselves very 

146 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

disagreeable. One fat old German wished to know if 
I expected him to go without food so that his relatives 
could be killed more easily by Yankee soldiers. I 
told him it was a pity he wasn't back in Germany 
himself, he wouldn't be so fat and we wouldn't have 
to worry over how much he ate ! You'd be surprised, 
too, at the number of women who sent down word 
that they 'weren't interested.' Perhaps they didn't 
actually send that word, but that was what came back 
to us. Maybe it was just a 'stall' on the part of the 
butler. On the whole, though, it was quite amusing 
the consideration we all got from the men ser- 
vants." 

"One doesn't expect much consideration from them," 
I agreed. 

"I think there are probably two reasons for their 
change of heart," said Miss Pritchett. "In the first 
place the able-bodied ones that haven't gone to the 
front are rather ashamed of themselves, and want to 
show that their sympathies are with the Allies; and 
in the second place I think that the attitude of ser- 
vants is changing, anyway. Good places aren't as 
easy to find as formerly. At least twenty per cent of 
my friends have given up housekeeping this winter. 
I suppose you read about the woman who discharged 
her entire force because they refused to sign the ad- 
ministration's pledge-cards when she asked them to ? " 

"Yes, I did," I answered. "If the war has less- 
147 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

ened the tyranny of the kitchen it has done some- 
thing for us, anyhow." 

"It's done more than that/' she asserted. "Look 
over at that table. Do you think that those women 
over there knew of each other's existence before war 
was declared ? They didn't. You're a friend of Mrs. 
Highbilt, I know. Well, so am I — now. Her entire 
world consisted simply of her own social circle, most 
of the members of which had incomes of over a hun- 
dred thousand dollars a year — a scattering of young 
men — 'parlor snakes,' you know — drawing-room singers 
and artistic people generally who wanted her patron- 
age, and the expensive men dressmakers, jewellers, 
and tradesmen with whom she dealt. She's told me 
so herself. She hadn't the remotest idea whether eggs 
ought to be twenty-five cents or a dollar and a quarter 
a dozen. As far as that goes, I'm not sure she does 
now. But she'll know soon enough, or I'll be very 
much mistaken. Anna Highbilt to-day is getting 
twice the fun out of life that she ever did before, be- 
cause, although she's working twice as hard, she's 
doing something real. I don't suppose she ever got 
up at four o'clock in the morning before in her life. 
When you come to think of it, though, it isn't very 
much more of a strain on one's constitution to get up 
at four than it is to sit up until four, and she has done 
that often enough playing bridge." 

Over at the improvised breakfast-table the canteen 
148 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

volunteers were chattering away very much as if they 
were at an afternoon tea. 

"Anna Highbilt isn't the only one, either. You 
know most women really haven't had a chance. You 
can't blame them for being ineffective and having 
what men think is a narrow point of view when they've 
never had any contact with people. I don't know 
whether you're going to vote for woman suffrage on 
November 6 " 

" I am ! " I hastened to assure her. 

"That's good," answered Miss Pritchett. "I hope 
you'll march in the parade, too. But let me give you 
an illustration of what getting out and mixing with 
other women has done for some of them. This is a 
true story. There's a very wealthy woman here in 
New York who, when the war broke out, made up her 
mind she wanted to do something for the country. 
She belonged to Anna Highbilt's class — of course I'm 
not referring to Anna. This woman asked to be put 
on a committee engaged in some active work, and she 
was made chairman of her local unit. I won't tell you 
what line of activity it was, because I don't want to 
identify her any more specifically, although what I am 
going to tell you is entirely to her credit. She threw 
into the job all the energy and executive ability that 
made her what they used to call a 'society leader.' " 

Miss Pritchett laughed softly. Her laughter was 
contagious. 

149 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"I note," I commented, "that you use the verb in 
the past tense." 

"Yes," said Miss Pritchett. "I don't think we 
shall hear very much about 'society leaders' in the 
future. Well, as I was saying, this woman had an 
enormous amount of vitality. She was capable, 
rather aggressive, and I'm afraid had a rather exag- 
gerated idea of her own importance. Under her were 
a committee of about a dozen men and women. They 
were not 'society leaders,' They were just plain peo- 
ple who were making a good many sacrifices to do the 
work in hand. Everything seemed to be going along 
pretty well until one day I received a telephone mes- 
sage asking if I would see the committee if they called. 
Naturally, I was rather surprised, but I fixed an hour, 
and that afternoon the entire committee, with the 
exception of the lady I speak of, came to my house. 
It appeared that they couldn't stand their chairman 
another minute. She meant well, they said, but she 
was overbearing, inconsiderate, inefficient, and well — • 
either she must retire or they would resign in a body. 
I saw that they meant business. I asked them to 
give me twenty-four hours. Then I telephoned to 
this woman and made an appointment with her for 
the following morning." 

" Not very pleasant for you," I ventured. 

"Pleasant? I'd rather have gone 'over the top* 
and across No Man's Land and tried to cut my way 

150 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

through twenty feet of barbed wire," declared Miss 
Pritchett, "than tackle that particular woman in her 
own drawing-room. But I made up my mind that it 
was up to me. The butler showed me in and I sat on 
the corner of a Louis XVI bergere, feeling very much, 
I imagine, as Charlotte Corday must have on her way 
to the guillotine. Presently my lady swept in. She 
was arrayed in a new tailor-made gown cut a la mili- 
taire, and was evidently just on the point of going 
out on the work of her committee, for her motor was 
at the door and she had some papers in her hand. I 
suppose she thought I was there to congratulate 
her on making a good job of it, for she nearly fell 
all over me in her enthusiasm. However, I wasn't 
going to put her at a disadvantage by any false pre- 
tenses. 

"Without giving her a chance to sit down, I said: 

'Miss , I have come here to say to you the most 

unpleasant things, probably, that one woman has ever 
had to say to another. There is nothing personal 
about it, and in a way that makes it all the worse. 
What I have to say is going to be said in cold blood.* 
She turned white and drew back. I could see the 
effect of my words was as if I had struck her in the 
face. She didn't understand, but she was horribly 
hurt. 

"'It's going to be very hard,' I continued. 'Shall 
I tell you or not?' 

151 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"She hesitated, then gripped the back of the chair 
in front of her and said: 'Go ahead.' 

" 'Miss / I went on in a perfectly matter-of- 
fact way, 'the men and women on your committee 
have come to me and said certain things. I don't 
know whether they are true or not. I leave that to 
you. It isn't a question of anything except getting 
the work done. They say that you are — ' and then I 
went ahead and let her have it, using the exact lan- 
guage of the different members of her committee. It 
was pretty bad. I had never done anything like it be- 
fore, and when I got through I found myself quite 
weak. 

"Miss stood behind her chair, getting whiter 

and whiter. When I had concluded she swallowed 
once or twice, bit her lips, then straightened up and 
said: 'Miss Pritchett, it hasn't been pleasant for me 
to hear these things, but I want to thank you for 
coming, and I don't blame the committee a bit for 
complaining of me. I can see now that I was every- 
thing that they have said I was. I haven't any reason 
for asking to remain as chairman, but I have put my 
hand to this plough and I don't want to turn back. 
I believe I am capable of handling it right. I don't 
think that the fault lies so much in what I've done as 
in the way I've done it. Whether I stay or nc"- I 
shall go to every man and woman on that committee 
and make a personal apology, and I hope that you and 

152 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

they will be willing to give me another chance. If you 
are, I promise you that there shall be no ground for 
any further complaint.' " 

"By George!" I exclaimed. "A real person." 

"Yes," agreed Miss Pritchett. "A very fine per- 
son — one of the very finest in this city. She did it, too, 
and to-day there isn't a committee doing any better 
work than hers." 

"I suppose," I hazarded, "that your friend would 
have gone on feeling and acting as if she were the 
whole cheese and antagonizing everybody for the rest 
of her life if the war hadn't given her this chance to 
find out just where she stood." 

"Exactly. And all her genuine administrative 
capacity and vitality would have been thrown away. 
Now it is being utilized in a good cause. She's a 
social leader in the real sense, instead of being a society 
leader." 

"Long Island troop-train coming in in five minutes 
on track nineteen!" shouted the assistant station- 
master from the doorway. 

The party at the table sprang to their feet and 
pushed back their chairs. While the women hurried 
toward the gate I helped fill the canisters with coffee 
and put them on the trucks. Then I joined my wife 
and Miss Pritchett on the lower platform. Already 
there was a little throng of people waiting for the 
train to come in; fathers and mothers, sisters and 

153 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

sweethearts, who had secured permission to say 
good-by to the men as they passed through. While 
we had been up-stairs in the restaurant waiting, ad- 
ditional supplies had been brought down to the lower 
level, so that now there were several tables of fruit 
and sandwiches, and an equal number of canisters 
of hot coffee. Every moment the platform became 
more crowded, and I perceived the advantage of hav- 
ing the canteen workers in uniform. One little old 
man particularly attracted my attention, he was so 
eager for the train to arrive. He could not have been 
more than sixty-five, but he was evidently suffering 
from rheumatism, for he walked with difficulty and 
his white hair made him look much older. I chatted 
with him for a moment and he told me that he had 
come to bid good-by to his only son whose name, like 
that of my own boy, was Jack. I should have learned 
more had not a distant whistle indicated the approach 
of the train, and the old man hobbled off as fast as 
he could without any particular idea of where he was 
going. 

"Stand back ! Stand back !" 

Out of the shadows flashed a white light, and amid 
the thunder of steel against steel the heavy train 
emerged from the tunnel and slowly came to a stop 
beside the platform. Immediately the windows were 
thrown up and the heads of the boys appeared, look- 
ing eagerly out. The crowd surged toward them, each 

154 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

expecting to recognize instantly the person he or she 
was looking for. But at first all were grievously dis- 
appointed. 

"What regiment are you?" called out a man's 
voice from the crowd. 

"The Three Hundred and th," answered a 

curly-headed lad, hanging half-way out of the window. 
"What place is this — Jersey City or New York? Gee, 
smell the coffee ! " 

There was another rumbling, another shrieking of 
brakes, and on the other side of the same platform 
slid in another train likewise full of soldiers — fifteen 
hundred in all — so many that they could not be al- 
lowed to leave the cars. In a moment the canteen 
women were hurrying from window to window, filling 
cups and handing up sandwiches and fruit. There 
was no delay. The boys had their cups ready and the 
women filled them from pitchers drawn from the coffee- 
canisters. Usually there were about four arms pro- 
truding from each window at the same time and it 
took but a moment to empty the pitchers and the 
trays of food which the women lifted up. There were 
eight car-loads in each train, which allowed two 
women to each car, but as each one held a hundred 
half-famished rookies the work was not easy. More- 
over, as fast as they had drained one tin cup of coffee 
and devoured a couple of sandwiches and a banana, 
they were ready for a second, and after that for a 

155 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

third round. I saw Helen hand one stalwart Irish 
lad five cups of coffee and thirteen sandwiches by 
actual count. 

Meantime most of the relatives and friends had 
found the fellows they were looking for and were giv- 
ing them all the latest news from home and listening 
to the gossip of the camp. Here and there a rookie, 
replete and happy, stuck his feet upon the opposite 
seat and burst into song regardless of his auditors. 
Others began to play cards and some endeavored to 
sleep. But most of those who had had no one come to 
bid them good-by began to ask the women to buy them 
post-cards at the news-stands and to take messages 
for their families to be delivered by telephone. I saw 
Anna Highbilt with a pad of paper in one hand and a 
pencil in the other standing beneath a crowded win- 
dow, trying to jot down half a dozen messages at the 
same time. 

"Tell my mother, please, ma'am — Orchard 3193 — 
that's the drug-store on the corner, but they'll send 
over for her — you tell her I'm fine — oh, fine! — 
and " 

"Say, missus, while he's tryin' to think of some- 
thing else, put down my girl for me, won't you ? Miss 
Sadie O'Connor — she's a saleslady at Lord & Taylor's 
— wait a minute, Jim! — you can get her between 
twelve and one at the noon hour. Tell her I'd sure 
have let her know about me coming through if they'd 

156 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

only told us long enough in advance. Tell her for me 
I'll bring her home something fine from Berlin. Tell 
her be sure to write " 

"I want you should tell my mother I am wearing 
her sweater," breaks in the man from Orchard 
Street. 

"Shut up, you big stiff! Wait till I get through!" 
protests the other. 

Before the tactful Anna can decide which gentle- 
man is entitled to priority a soft-eyed, olive-skinned 
Italian thrusts his head between them. 

"You taka a message for me please, lady? My 
broth' she work in the Banca Romano — Numero 
Cinque Cento — ^Via Lafayetta. You tella her I giva 
somet'ing to our mother for her bambino." 

"Whose bambmo?" inquires Anna, confused. 

"The bambino of my broth' who work in the bank. 
I giva two dollar to our mother for the bambino for 
Christmas!" 

A heavenly smile softens his face. 

"Grazie! Grazie! Lady!" 

Doubtless had he been upon the platform he would 
have kissed her hands. 

"I'll tell him!" Anna assures him, putting it all 
down. "Now, is there anybody else who wants to 
send a message?" 

"Sure! Oi do!" bawls a voice from the depths of 
the car, followed by a huge beaming Irish face. " Mrs. 

157 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

Thomas Sullivan, 64 Agnes Street, Omaha. I want 
to send her one of thim post-cards wid the Woolworth 
Building on it." 

"Your mother, I suppose?" asks Anna, unthinking. 

"Me mother nuthin'!" he retorts with a grin. 
"Sure she's me sweetheart! 'Tis a widdy she is I" 

The taking of messages is a serious business. Once 
certain that there is anybody who will really under- 
take to deliver them and every rookie is keen to take 
advantage of the opportunity. The windows are 
crowded with faces each anxious for his turn to send 
some farewell word to the person dearest or nearest to 
him. Sometimes it is sentimental; more often jocular; 
frequently only informative or prosaic. But it may 
be the last message ever received from them and this 
invests it with a sacred character. While the women 
were hard at work noting down divers communica- 
tions, I saw my little old man standing at the foot of 
the iron stairs with a look of abject misery upon his 
face. I was on the point of inquiring what was the 
matter when Miss Pritchett got ahead of me. 

"My boy!" choked the little old man. "I can't 
find him here. They must have sent him somewhere 
else. And it's the only chance I'll have to see him 
before he sails for France ! What can I do ? I must 
bid him good-by. He's all I've got in the world! 
His mother died fifteen years ago and I've brought 
him up myself just as I knew she would have wanted. 

158 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

He's the best boy in the world. If I could only touch 
him once more, only for a minute — just to feel that 
he's there, it'd be all I want ! " 

The old fellow had quite lost control of himself, 
and I could see Miss Pritchett giving a surreptitious 
dab at her eyes with a small handkerchief. 

"We'll see what we can do I" she said encourag- 
ingly. "There must be some way of finding him. 
What regiment does he belong to?" 

"The th," sobbed the old man. "I can't 

have him go this way. It'd break his heart and mine, 
too. I jest want to put my arm around him once like 
I used to do when he was a little boy.'* 

It was no use, I was already feeling for my own 
handkerchief. Why did they let little old men come 
around to bid lost boys good-by? Mrs. Judge Wad- 
bone now joined the group and from her we learned 

that the • th had been sent through to Jersey City. 

This finished the old fellow. He sat down on the 
lowest step and buried his head in his hands. Mrs. 
Supreme Court Wadbone screwed up her face and a 
large tear suddenly appeared upon the end of her 
Napoleonic nose. Obviously, it would be quite im- 
possible for our old friend to secure at this late hour 
a permit to allow him to meet the train at Jersey City, 
even if he could get there in time to do so. The 
canteen committee — including the male member — 
gathered helplessly around him like a group of mourners 

159 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

at a funeral. Suddenly into our midst was wedged the 
capable figure of Anna Highbilt. 

"What are all you ninnies crying about?" she 
demanded. 

The little old man raised his head despairingly. 

"If I could only just touch him once/' he repeated. 
"He's all I've got " 

"You see," I explained hurriedly, for I didn't want 
to hear any more about that boy, "his son's regunent 
has been sent across to Jersey City instead of here as 
was originally intended. He's afraid he won't have a 
chance to see him before he sails." 

"And he's the only son he's got," sniffed Mrs. 
Wadbone. 

"Not see him? Of course he'll see him, if I have 
to charter a tug or a special train!" declared the in- 
dignant Mrs. Highbilt. "I know the commanding 
general — he's dined at my house half a dozen times — 
I'll telephone him at once. Come along, old man ! 
You come right along with me ! I promise you you'll 
see your boy, if we have to stop the transport or flag 
the train." 

"Isn't she great!" ejaculated Miss Pritchett. 

"Anna's all right!" I assented. 

And the last we saw of our "social leader" she was 
half carrying the old man up the stairs in the direction 
of the taxicab stand. I heard afterward that she had 
managed somehow through her connections in Wash- 

160 



MY WIFE AND OTHERS 

ington to give the old fellow his longed-for opportu- 
nity to bid his son good-by. 

It was after eight o'clock before the troop-trains 
pulled out. Already the sunlight was pouring through 
the huge studio-like windows of the station. Weary 
but exhilarated from the consciousness of the pleasure 
they had given and the good they had accomplished, 
the thirty women of the canteen climbed up the iron 
staircase, shook hands all round, and bade each other 
good-by. 

"I want all you girls to dine with me next week 
— Friday," said Anna. "Is it a date?" 

It was ! 

I had a queer feeling in my throat as I tucked 
Helen's arm under my elbow and led her toward the 
entrance. Human nature was a pretty fine thing, 
after all! We found Miss Pritchett on the sidewalk 
and offered her a lift. Near Forty-fifth Street she 
asked to be dropped at her store. 

"Your store !" I exclaimed. 

"Why, yes," she answered calmly. "Didn't you 
know that I was 'Lorette'?" Then she laughed and 
added: "I don't want to mix war work and business, 
but really I make awfully good hats ! " 

"I bet you do !" said I, wringing her hand. 



161 



MY DAUGHTER 

"The person I am worrying about is Margery!^* 
Helen confided to me rather anxiously about a week 
after our return to New York. 

"What's the matter with her?" I demanded, not 
having observed anything peculiar about my daughter 
up to that moment. 

"What are we going to do with her?" she asked. 

"What should we do with her?" I retorted. "Can't 
she take care of herself? Seems to me there's plenty 
for all of us to do." 

My wife uttered a half-amused but plaintive sigh. 

"Don't you imderstand?" she inquired pathet- 
ically. "The poor child was 'coming out' this winter 
and now there isn't anything for her to come out into ! " 
and she handed me a clippmg from the "society notes" 
of the morning paper. 

"Owing to the war," it read, "the regular debutante 
assemblies have been given up for the winter season 
of 1917-1918." 

"Isn't it too bad?" she exclaimed. "Poor Mar- 
gery! All her winter simply knocked topsyturvy! 
Think of all the plans we made for her. Why, I don't 
suppose now she will ever come out at all!" 

162 



MY DAUGHTER 

I handed the cuttmg back to her without comment. 

"Well?" said my wife with a rising inflection. 
"Don't you feel sorry?" 

"No," I retorted, "I can't say that I do. ^I think 
the whole blooming business was just plain rot. Why 
should she want to 'come out'? Frankly, I'm glad 
that she can't." 

My wife bit her lip. I suppose I was a little brusquer 
than the occasion demanded. 

"Really, John!" she expostulated. "I think you 
are rather unfeeling about it!" 

Now, I did not regard myself as unfeeling at all. 
I have always looked upon myself as a sympathetic 
and indulgent parent. Indeed, if I ever desired to 
secure another job as a father I feel confident that 
both my wife and daughter would give me a high rec- 
ommendation for good manners, obedience, and docil- 
ity. My evenings, Sundays, and check-book have 
always been at their disposal. I have chaperoned my 
children from their earliest years to church, the thea- 
tre, the circus, to ball-games, and the races. I have 
played Santa Claus at Christmas and furnished an 
unlimited supply of eggs and rabbits at Easter. I 
have ordered myself humbly and reverently to them 
as to my betters, and have never hurt them either by 
word or deed. But for all that I have never exercised 
any individual discretion in the bringing up of Margery. 

I had always been devoted to her. She was un- 
163 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

deniably pretty, reasonably intelligent, loving and 
amenable, and an object of distinct interest to those 
of the opposite sex who were of her own age and 
whom fortune had thrown in her path. 

She had been educated at the best schools that we 
could find in the city; had been taught sewing, riding, 
drawing, and the piano; had been exercised regularly 
at a gymnasium; had had her teeth straightened at 
an expense of several thousand dollars; had taken 
courses in modern music, "art movements" and 
"bird life" in Central Park; and could pour tea grace- 
fully and talk fluently about the theatre, opera, and 
what other girls of her own age were doing. 

But Margery, with all her amiability of character, 
could not make a cup of coffee, knew nothing whatever 
about housekeeping, and, although she had taken 
sewing-lessons, could not make over a hat or a last 
year's dress. I doubt if she had ever darned a stocking. 
Those sewing-lessons at two dollars per hour consisted 
in sitting around with five other young ladies and 
doing hemstitching twice every week for three months. 
She had never learned to use her hands and had never 
been called upon to do anything for herself. | 

It seems to me that the daughters of men of my 
own kind have been brought up hitherto with the 
idea that life was going to be a long joy-ride, during 
which one or more men would endeavor to keep them 
entertained and amused. It has never been suggested 

164 



MY DAUGHTER 

to them that they might be called upon to take care 
of the car. 

Helen and I were not rich in the latter-day accep- 
tance of the term, but we had brought up our daughter 
in such a way as to make her an admirable chatelaine 
for a millionaire and totally unfit to live upon a moder- 
ate income. She had been brought up on a scale (for 
two) of about twenty-five thousand dollars per annum 
— that is, it would have cost her husband, if they had 
had no children, about that sum to give her what she 
was used to and what we were giving her before the 
war hit us. It would have taken at least ten thousand 
dollars to maintain her — according to her lights — in 
only modest comfort. 

Well, Margery is a dear girl and she is my daughter, 
but — I sometimes wondered if she was worth it ! I de- 
voutly hoped that some young gentleman of the right 
sort would think so and be willing to back up his 
opinion. 

"I don't care!" I replied stubbornly. "I'm not 
sorry. I'm glad. Do you think I could stand for 
Margery gadding around to dances after you've given 
up your motor and are working your hands off making 
bandages? It's time she began to take life seriously 1" 

"That time will come soon enough," replied my 
wife. "I don't care a bit for what the war has done 
to me! It doesn't hurt me much to give up things. 
But it's different with a girl like Margery. She's 

165 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

young and pretty and well, and she ought to be 
happy. Dear me, if she doesn't get a little gayety 
now, when will she ever get it? Besides, she won't 
know anybody. 'Coming out' is the way they meet 
the young men " 

"Young men!" I interrupted sarcastically. "There 
won't be any young men — worth meeting." 

"Oh, yes there will!" she answered. "There will 
be plenty who haven't gone to the war yet, but who, 
of course, are going. And there are a lot who are too 
young to go." 

"And too old!" I interjected. 

Helen looked at me suspiciously. I had always been 
a cynic, but I had never realized how deeply the idea 
of bringing Margery out had sunk into my wife's soul. 

From the time that Margery had first been put 
into short dresses my wife had made elaborate plans 
for the denouement which was only due fifteen years 
later. I had no quarrel with bringing girls out in 
society. I suppose that essentially my quarrel was 
with society itself. A girl has got to leave the nursery 
some time. But I had always wanted to register a pro- 
test against the lavishness and expenditure that was 
made incidental to this perfectly natural transition 
from the schoolroom to the drawing-room. Wasn't it 
calculated to make any young girl, no matter how sim- 
ple or sensible theretofore, put a false value on mere 
money? How could it be otherwise when practically 

166 



MY DAUGHTER 

every mother felt obliged to make her daughter's 
'coming-out" ball a grand affair, similar in every 
respect to the entertainments given by other mothers 
whose incomes knew no limit? 

All this parade of luxury and wealth tended to 
frighten off the serious-minded young fellows who 
otherwise might have become interested. The very 
efforts of the mother to marry off her daughter tended 
to defeat her object, surrounding her, as she did, with 
a veneered wall of wealth and a barrier of false fashion. 
Indeed, most of the men at whose heads she threw 
her were not those from among whom she would want 
her to marry or who themselves had any idea of 
getting married. More often than not they were either 
jaded popinjays and "pet cats" who year by year got 
a social living by dancing with the debutantes and 
making themselves useful to the mothers, or feature- 
less "dancing-men" who had nothing better to do 
than go to balls. 

Only last year a friend of mine who wished to give 
an evening-party called up the best known restaurateur 
on Fifth Avenue, and asked whether he could secure 
a private dining-room for some night in January, 
February, or March. Although it was then early in 
October, he was told that every room in the establish- 
ment was already engaged for every night during the 
three months ! The reason was that practically every 
mother of every daughter who was about to make her 

167 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

debut into society had entered upon a campaign to 
give her child one of those "good times." 

Of these introductions to society the majority might 
be ordinary enough affairs without any particular dis- 
play, to which the girl invited all her friends of the 
dancing age, and where the guests enjoyed themselves 
in a simple and reasonable way. But in a minority 
of instances — yet in a sufficient number to tinge the 
debutante horizon with a faint yellow glow of cynicism 
— these dances had a sordid and mercenary aspect. In 
the larger American cities parents who didn't know the 
ropes or weren't quite sure of their place even availed 
themselves of press agencies and professional social 
steerers, who dictated to the girl the names of those 
whom she must ask (whether she knew them or not) if 
she expected to be received as one of the elect. The 
"coming-out" ball was not given in the home of the 
parents, ostensibly because the house would have been 
too small, but really because, as the whole affair was 
nothing but a fake, it was easier to induce the "right" 
young people to go to a restaurant. The snobbish 
young sycophant who might have shied at going to a 
house the owners of which he did not know could be 
more safely lured to a hired hall ! 

Here in one of half a dozen similar rooms, in which 
half a dozen similar entertainments were going on at 
the same time, the girl and her mother stood in a 
"gazabo" of potted palms, and received several hun- 

168 



MY DAUGHTER 

dred properly accredited persons. Many of these were 
their friends, but some, at least, were total strangers 
— young men carried on the lists as eligible because 
their families were in The Social Radiator and girls 
whom the debutante ought to have known even if 
she didn't. For six or seven hours this curiously 
impersonal mob danced, ate, and drank by virtue of 
the debutante's father's check-book, and she was 
whirled breathlessly about the room by sleek-haired, 
sap-headed young "desirables" who "cut in" on each 
other with shrewd calculation, while the utility man 
in the orchestra yelled, whistled, and uttered all 
the noises in the zoological gamut from the cry of 
a baby to the more appropriate bray of a donkey. 
At half after four or five the exhausted guests de- 
parted, insisting vociferously that they had had a 
"perfectly wonderful time." The bewildered victim 
of this barbaric sacrifice was hustled home, put in- 
stantly to bed, and the house maintained in absolute 
silence for eight or ten hours in order that she might 
recover sufficiently to go to another jamboree given 
in the same room in the same restaurant the follow- 
ing night; for, having given one of these delightful 
entertainments herself she became thereby privi- 
leged to attend all the others given by similar unfor- 
tunates. 

"No, Helen," I repeated, "you can thank your 
stars that you and Margery have escaped from it all. 

169 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

You don't see the side of it that I do. You're too 
good and kind. But I'm glad it's all over for every- 
body." 

"Do you really think it is all over?" she asked. 
"Dost think, John, that because thou art virtuous 
the young shall have no more cakes and ale?" 

I laughed. 

"Cakes and non-alcoholic beverages — ^yes/' I an- 
swered. "But no more petit-fours and champagne- 
cup. Look here, Helen. Hasn't it ever occurred to 
you to ask yourself why the daughters of the rich 
should assume that they had a monopoly of amuse- 
ment? Why should you sentimentalize about this 
particular class of girls when the youth of the whole 
nation has got to suffer ? Don't you suppose it's going 
to hit 'em all about the same?" 

"I hadn't really thought much about it," she ad- 
mitted frankly. "I suppose you're right. But what 
are we going to do about Margery?" 

Had we only known it we need not have concerned 
ourselves particularly about that young lady. After 
the first rush of getting the house started (during 
which my daughter made up in initiative and enthu- 
siasm what she lacked in knowledge and technic) 
she had relapsed into the period of quasi-inactivity 
that had excited the solicitude of her mother. Then 
she unexpectedly announced one evening out of a clear 
sky that she wanted to go to work. 

170 



MY DAUGHTER 

"Go to work!" said her mother. "What sort of 
work?" 

" Oh, almost anything. All the girls are doing some- 
thing, you know. Clara Smith is learning telegraphy, 
and Dot George is studying to be a trained nurse; 
two of the others are driving ambulance supply 
wagons in France; a lot are going to canvass in the 
food campaign or are doing administrative work of 
one sort or another — everybody's busy, and I want 
to be!" 

"Good!" I exclaimed. "How about going over 
to nurse?" 

"It would kill her!" announced Helen. "She isn't 
nearly strong enough! What's even more important 
she's not old enough. I'm perfectly willing to have 
Margery do anything reasonable and necessary, but 
there's a lot of nonsense about this business of send- 
ing girls to France! Imagine letting Polly Pratt go 
over to Paris to drive an ambulance ! I'd hate to be 
a blesse with her pounding me over the cobblestones ! 
She never drove that ambulance, as a matter of fact. 
When she got there they wouldn't let her. She's been 
banging around Paris ever since." 

" She had a fine going-away party at Sherry's, any- 
how!" I said. "Don't you remember the full-page 
picture of her in her costume?'* 

"She's had a good many more parties over there 
at the Ritz, they tell me!" added Helen. 

171 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"Don't worry!" smiled Margery. "I don't want 
to go to Paris or to drive an ambulance. I haven't 
any romantic ambitions and I'd be scared to death 
to cross the ocean. I just want to work — that's all — 
do something right here at home. It's partly because 
I feel I ought to and it's partly because I haven't any- 
thing else to do." 

"Any ideas?" I inquired. 

"We-ell," she answered, "I've always wished that 
I could do stenography and typewriting. There must 
be a lot of stenographers needed just now by the 
government, and to take the places of men who have 
either volunteered or been drafted. I think I could 
do it. Anyhow, I could try. There are plenty of good 
schools." 

"Fine!" I said. "Great idea! Why don't you 
start right in to-morrow ? " 

"I'm going to," she announced calmly. 

"Where?" we shouted in unison. 

"Pocker's Business College on One Hundred and 
Seventy-first Street." 

"Great heavens!" I cried aghast. "Why, that's 
a hundred blocks from here — five miles! How are 
you gomg to get there in the first place?" 

"In the street-cars, of course." 

"Margery!" cried Helen, "I can't have you cruis- 
ing all over New York in public conveyances. It isn't 
the thing at all for a young girl — don't forget 

172 



MY DAUGHTER 

you haven't any maid. Some man might speak to 
you!" 

"I've thought of that," answered my ewe lamb. "I 
shall ostentatiously carry a copy of The New Republic 
or The Atlantic Monthly; that ought to keep triflers at 
a distance." 

"Let her go," said I. "Isn't that about as good a 
way for her to 'come out' as any?" 

It is the youth of America who are going to win 
this war, if it is to be won; and no one knows it better 
than they. You can see it in their faces all about you. 
The silly little drone of yesterday is the busy worker 
of to-day. The change is so astonishing that it 
challenges credulity. How can it be possible that 
girls brought up in the lavish, idle, and selfish fashion 
of our time can almost overnight have been trans- 
formed into serious-minded young women intent upon 
carrying on their share of the nation's work? It is, 
nevertheless, true. Almost without exception Mar- 
gery's friends are, as they express it, "doing some- 
thing for the war." Well, the war is doing something 
for them, has done it already. It has brought out 
qualities too fine to be destroyed even by the mad 
parental effort to furnish them with amusement, give 
them that much-heralded "good time." It must be 
that underneath her superficiality, her pertness, her 
egotism, and her face-powder, there is in the Amer- 
ican girl a spirit which not even the snobbery, the 

173 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

sham, and the artificial excitement of metropolitan 
social life can efface. 

For Margery and her set there are practically no 
amusements now. There are no dances, no dinners, 
no "week-ends." Occasionally one or more of her 
boy friends get a day's leave and we go to the theatre, 
but the girls who come with us wear their last year's 
dresses, and the boys are all in uniform. There is, 
besides, a simplicity about their relations that is quite 
new to Helen and me. In fact as 1 have written some 
of the preceding paragraphs my conscience has pricked 
me a little, for more than one of the young fellows I 
have stigmatized as "sapheads" has turned out to be 
an efficient officer, and his manners have become 
wholly unrecognizable. 

I suppose the dearth of males is rather hard on 
the girls. But it will be a good chance for them to 
find out before marriage who are the slackers, instead 
of waiting until afterward. Meantime they will be 
learning to cook, sew, keep house, and nurse — in prep- 
aration for the home-coming of the right kind of men 
— instead of wasting their time as they used to do at 
theatres, roof-gardens, and at dances with boys whom 
in their hearts they have usually despised. The war 
will drive away all the fakes and fortune-hunters, and 
will introduce our daughters into the best society for 
us — ^the society of the men who are going to save and 
then govern the country. 

174 



VI 
MY SOLDIER SON 

"We have shared the incommunicable experience of wax; we 
have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top." 

The Long Island train is slowly hitching its way 
over endless level fields of corn stubble and cabbages. 
You cannot see much of the stubble, for the rain has 
turned the rich earth into a brown ooze, which in the 
hollows has expanded into wide soup-like puddles, and 
the cabbages look like the green bathing-caps of 
a multitude of lady swimmers among the stalks. 
Outside the drops pelt viciously against the windows 
of the smoking-car, and dart down toward the sashes 
in quick streaks. Inside the air is thick with cigarette 
smoke, the fumes of which do not disguise a lurkmg 
odor of rubber and damp wool. We are taking four 
hours to do a schedule trip of two, and the boys in 
khaki, returning to camp after forty-eight hours' leave, 
though good-natured, are not complimentary. 

In the seat in front of me a chubby red-faced youth 
is recounting some experience of the night before. I 
cannot hear all of it, but it seems to end in an 
encouraging manner: 

175 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"Gee!" I says, sarcastic like, "is that so? Well," 
I says, "you just better run along home, girlie, where 
you belong. This ain't no place for kids ! " I says. 

" Oh, Gee ! " echoes his companion sympathetically, 
shifting his gum, and then ruminatively: "Ain't they 
a pest ! " 

There is a card game going on across the way, and 
up at the end of the car a mouth-organ contests su- 
premacy with three "barber chord" artists. There 
is a lot of slouchuig up and down the aisle and some 
cheerful scrapping, which at times causes me to make 
myself as small as possible. It is not uninteresting, but 
two hours are likely to be more than enough of it. I 
try to read the paper, but the smoke makes my eyes 
smart and I light my pipe in self-defense. I wonder 
why on earth I ever went to the unnecessary trouble 
of going down to visit Jack at his camp, instead of 
waiting for him to come to New York. Really, the 
smoke is impossible ! I speculate as to the proba- 
bility of getting an express back to the city at an early 
hour. 

The train halts at a road crossing, decorated by a 
few reeling sign-boards, and conveniently adjacent to 
a saloon. I can hear the panting of the engine. Evi- 
dently they are taking on water — or beer — or some- 
thing. Then the door opens behind me, and there 
is a perceptible stiffening of backs — as the men turn 
round. 

176 



MY SOLDIER SON 

"Hello, father!" cries Jack, clapping me on the 
shoulder. "I got 'permish' to come down the road 
and pick you up. How are you ? " 

The chubby youth has risen and now stands at 
salute. 

"Take this seat, sir," says he. "Me and my pal 
can move up front. You can turn her back — this 
way." 

"Thanks!" returns Captain John Stanton, Junior, 
taking possession of the seat, and swinging it over to 
face me, as if he had spent a lifetime as the recipient 
of attentions from a military orderly. I watch him 
in wonder. There is a self-possession, an ease of 
manner, an assurance about him that had been non- 
existent ten months before, and to wliich I am unable 
to accustom myself. 

We had been too much excited at seeing him that 
first evening of our return home quite to grasp the 
transformation he had undergone; but, now that I 
could really look him over, he didn't seem to be the 
same Jack at all; there wasn't a trace of the original 
animal left. He had a new body and apparently he 
had gained a new soul. I suppose the mere uniform 
might have tended to create this effect, but with Jack 
the uniform was the merest incident. He had lost 
about twelve pounds, looked four inches taller, and 
in place of his habitual slouchiness had acquired an 
erect and almost graceful carriage. 

177 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

Moreover, instead of calling me Dad, Old Top, 
Governor, or Boss, he now addressed me as Father, 
with an occasional Sir. I confess that in his previous 
state of existence any such formality would have been 
out of place. Before, he had always gone round whis- 
tling, never answering a question seriously, and ap- 
parently never thinking about anything. This grave 
youth was an utter stranger to me, and, at first, I felt 
the awkwardness engendered by his strangeness. 

The last time I had visited Jack in Cambridge, 
prior to our return to New York in the autumn of 1917, 
had been in the November of his sophomore year, the 
occasion being a note from the dean of Harvard College, 
informing me that the enthusiasm roused in my son 
by a certain victory upon the football-field had so 
stimulated his desire for mural decoration that he had 
suspended a necklace of seven or eight glistening white 
W'ater-pitchers from the cupola of Harvard Hall. 

He had previously floundered along in the lower 
third of his form at Groton, occasionally, under the 
impetus of parental admonition, indulging in a rocket- 
like ascent to second or third place, from which in- 
evitably, at the end of a month or two, he descended 
like the proverbial stick. At home his chief occupa- 
tions had been coloring a large meerschaum pipe and 
singing Hawaiian love-songs through his nose to the 
accompaniment of the ukulele. 

Once he had passed his college exams, any thought 
178 



MY SOLDIER SON 

of intellectual labor seemed to have departed from 
him; and, to my astonishment, I began to hear him 
spoken of as quite an extraordinary eccentric dancer. 
His chief form of amusement seemed to be going to 
the theatre in Boston with a couple of his chums and 
then motoring by night to New York, arriving at our 
house about breakfast-time, and returning the next 
evening in the same manner. During the spring term 
of his freshman year, while running for the Dicky, he 
had appeared at a symphony rehearsal in Boston 
covered with shoestrings, which he had attempted to 
sell between the musical numbers — until ejected. His 
general tendency to make a fool of himself had gradu- 
ally diminished, to be sure; but the recollection of it 
had remained. I had regarded him with affection, 
tempered by distrust, and had always suspected him 
of laziness and frivolity. That was the Jack I had 
left in December, 1916. It was the portrait of him 
that I still carried in my mind when I returned to New 
York the following October. 

But I soon saw that something had occurred un- 
dreamed of as possible in my philosophy. When I 
had first learned that Jack had donned the uniform 
of his country I had been guilty of making some un- 
feeling jest about an "ass in a lion's skin." Now, to 
my wonderment and pride, I found that the ass had 
grown to fit it. If not yet an adult lion — ass, at any 
rate, he was no longer. But to us he was a full-grown 

179 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

lion already. We regarded him with respect and hung 
upon his words, thrilled with a sad happiness. 

He himself knew that he had changed, was under 
no delusions as to what the future might have in store 
for him, and his constant effort was to convince us 
that his going into the army was the greatest thing 
that had ever happened to him. There was, even to 
our anxious minds, not the slightest doubt about that. 
The boy had actually become a man. 

He offered me a cigarette, lit one for himself, and — 
asked me whether I minded his putting his feet upon 
the seat beside me ! 

"Too bad it's such a rotten day!" he remarked, 
glancing through the window. "Anyhow, you can 
see our quarters and get some idea of what it's all like. 
Awfully good of you to bother to come." 

"Do you suppose anything could keep me away?" 
I demanded gruflBy. " This war is the most momentous 
event in the history of the world. I want to see all I 
can of it — even if only vicariously. But I shall never 
be able to catch up with you, Jack." 

"Well," he conceded, "I'll have to admit IVe 
learned a lot about all sorts of things — particularly 
my fellow citizens of the United States of America. 
Out of the two hundred and eighty men in my com- 
pany, thirty of them — literally — couldn't speak a 
word of English!" 

"Couldn't speak English!" I exclaimed, astounded. 
180 



MY SOLDIER SON 

"Do you mean to say there are men in our army who 
can't speak EngHsh?" 

"Sure!" he retorted. "My thirty were birds! We 
had to begin at the very beginning — put 'em in Hne, 
point at their right foot, and say : * Foot ! Right foot 1 
That — is — ^your — right — foot ! ' Gradually we got 'em 
so they could face to the right and left, and most of 
them now can ask for meat and beans. Why, there is 
one fellow down here who not only couldn't speak any 
English, but he couldn't tell us who he was. Nobody 
knows now where he came from, how he got here, 
where he was born, or anything about him. We tried 
every kind of interpreter on him in the camp, and they 
all gave him up in despair. He just made queer 
noises with his mouth. Finally I got a piece of paper 
and wrote the word Smith on it and pinned it on his 
cuff. 'You're Smith !' I said. And Smith he is 1 

"There's a place called Tijflis, over in the Cau- 
casus, where they say you can hear one hundred and 
SLxty-seven languages spoken. I tell you it's got noth- 
ing on us. The first seventeen men on my muster- 
roll, for instance, represent twelve different nation- 
alities; and the first one. Abend, is a German, with 
two brothers in the boche army fighting on the western 
front. Then there's Aristopoulous, a Greek; and lit- 
tle Baracca, an Italian; Badapol — I don't know what 
he is — some kind of Slav, I guess; Castaigne, he's 
French extraction; Callahan, Irish; Conant, Welsh; 

181 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

Korbel, Bohemian; DIklrlan, he's a Syrian rug-seller — 
I forget just how they come; but further along there's 
Zriek, an Arab; Potopoff, a Russian; Pacheco, who 
comes from Sonora, Mexico; a whole bunch of Lithu- 
anians and a lot from little Russian places you never 
heard of at all. 

"They're not half so green, though, as some of the 
chaps right from the U. S. A. I've got two New York 
men from the Adirondacks who never were on a rail- 
road-train until they were drafted, and one from way 
up near the Canadian border who never had seen an 
electric light or a moving picture ! But they're bully 
stuff, most of them. Army life brings out what's 
best in each one and sort of distributes it around 
among the others. I've learned a lot from some of 
them." 

" How about those fellows that have been forced 
into the service?" I asked. "After all, it isn't as if 
they were volunteers." 

"No," he admitted, "not exactly — yet. But it's 
gradually getting to be so, and by the time we sail I 
don't believe there'll be ten per cent of the men who 
won't have what I call 'the volunteer spirit.' Of 
course, at the beginning there's a difference between 
the attitude of the volunteer and the selected man. 
But the extraordinary part about the life down here is 
that, after they have been here a few days and seen 
how things are done, most of the men get an entirely 

182 



MY SOLDIER SON 

new point of view and are proud and glad to be here. 
It may be due in part to the feeling that, having been 
drafted, they might as well make the best of it, and 
that the only way to save their own lives — which is 
what I tell 'em every day — is to make themselves as 
eflScient as possible so that when they come out of 
the trenches they can put the boches on the run. Or 
it may be something else." He hesitated. "I don't 
know. 

"There's a kind of feeling about the whole thing 
that I can't explain! Anyhow, it gets hold of 'em! 
Now, I am telling you the honest truth when I say 
that, in spite of the fact that seventy-five per cent of 
my own men claimed exemption in the first place, 
seventy-five per cent of all of them to-day have abso- 
lutely the volunteer spirit. The other twenty-five are 
still grumbling — frankly. They say they didn't want 
to fight; that they're being made to fight against their 
will; and that the decision of the exemption boards in 
their respective cases was unfair and unjust. But 
they're getting over it. They're getting to see that, 
when you come right down to it, the only really demo- 
cratic army is a selected army." 

"How about socialism?" I inquired timidly. 

"I don't hear much about it," he said, "except the 
backhanded kind you get in some newspapers. There 
isn't any pamphleteering as yet. I think there's some- 
thing about how our men are treated and their rela- 

183 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

tion to their officers which makes against that kind of 
thing. It's so different from the way things used to 
be in the regular army and the way, as I understand 
it, things are on the other side." 
" How do you mean ? " I asked. " How, different ? " 
"Why," he repHed, "we do everything we can to 
encourage intercourse between the men and the of- 
ficers. Every man in the company is free to come to 
me at any time to ask questions, and to have the 
reasons for doing a particular thing in a particular 
way explained to him. That, I understand, was 
something unheard of in the regular army." 

" * Theirs not to reason why, 
Theu:s but to do and die,' '* 

I murmured. 

"That was the old idea," responded Jack. Now, 
I bet you that my men will do and die Just as readily 
if, before they reach the point of doing and dying, 
they feel that their government wants them to know 
and understand the reason. The noncoms sent down 
here from the regular army don't understand it at 
all; but I think it is going to make a big difference, 
and it certainly makes for the right sort of democ- 
racy." 

"Do you find them quick to learn? How about 
their intelligence?" 

"It's really ■ wonderful ! " he exclaimed with enthu- 
siasm. " In the first place it's astonishing what a high 

184 



MY SOLDIER SON 

grade of men we have got in the draft. There are 
about a dozen college men in my company alone, and 
there are any number of fellows who have held rather 
responsible business positions. We have two noncom 
instructors from the regular army, and the way the 
fellows pick it all up is perfectly astonishing. 

"There's another thing, too, you'd be interested 
in, and that's the general tone of the whole place. 
Perhaps you don't know it, but there used to be a 
kind of convention among the enlisted men at an army 
post which required them to curse every other word. 
Nobody ever spoke of a rifle as a plain rifle — it was 

a rifle. It was the same way about everything. 

Now this new army of ours is really a new army. It 
hasn't got any traditions of swearing or carousing. 
Uncle Sam has started in perfectly fresh, without the 
handicap in morals that a huge regular army would 
have involved. The men haven't been used to pro- 
fane and smutty talk, and they don't want it. Those 
that do, get it kicked out of them pretty quick. The 
Y. M. C. A. centres are simply great ! Do you know 
that we've got a Y. M. C. A. house for every regiment? 
No Sunday-school talk, either ! Anybody can go there 
— Jews, Roman Catholics, Hindus, atheists ! A fellow 
doesn't have a Bible shoved into one hand and a 
hymn-book into the other if he wants to write a letter 
home. 

"I have a vaudeville show every ten days that, 
185 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

honestly, beats anything you can get on Broadway. 
Right in my own company I've got two professional 
actors, a professional dancer, an acrobat, and juggler, 
three men that were leaders in college theatricals, and 
so much amateur musical talent that I don't know 
what to do with it. I'm not joking; you couldn't get 
for a dollar in New York City what our men get at 
that vaudeville show every ten days — and the bill is 
new every time." 

"How about your equipment?" 

Jack shrugged his shoulders. 

"Rotten! I suppose it will come — some time. At 
present in my company we've got sixty Krags and 
that's all; but, of course, we're not going to use Krags 
on the other side. However, I guess the government 
will look out for us! But having the wrong kind of 
rifles is bad business, because the balance is different, 
and it is bound to handicap us more or less. 

"However, equipment or no equipment, I tell you 
the men are getting into fine shape. Physically they're 
a ripping lot of fellows. They can go out with a pick 
and shovel, and work four hours in the morning and 
four hours again in the afternoon, and not turn a hair ! 

"I've seen some remarkable changes in physique 
too. You know, there are a lot of fellows down here 
who are a great deal better off than they ever were 
before in their lives. For example, there are about 
fifteen men in my company who worked in sweat- 

186 



MY SOLDIER SON 

shops on the East Side. I don't suppose they got more 
than eleven or twelve dollars a week at the outside. 
You wonder how they ever got by inspection. That's 
another question. You know they send us a lot of 
cripples — real cripples, I mean ! 

"Well, to get back to my sweat-shop men. When 
they came here they were as pasty-faced, narrow- 
chested, and clammy-handed a bunch as you ever 
saw. They had all claimed exemption, were scared to 
death, and thought they were just going to be trotted 
out and shot. When they recovered from fright they 
bellowed like steers about tyranny and injustice I 
What's happened? They have been given regular 
exercise and all they can eat three times a day, in- 
cluding red meat, and they're fit as prize-fighters and 
as happy as clams. 

"To-day you wouldn't know 'em ! Their chests have 
expanded about five inches; their complexions have 
cleared up; they've been in English school right along, 
so that by this time they can talk pretty intelligibly, 
and they can go to the Y. M. C. A. and read, or watch 
a good vaudeville show for nothing, instead of paying 
their money to go to a cheap movie or sitting around 
talking socialism. 

" I tell you when those fellows come out of the army 
they will have a respect for the United States Govern- 
ment they'd never get in any other way. When Ikey 
and Abie go back to the East Side, if any greasy an- 

187 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

archist attempts to put anything over on them, Ikey 
and Abie will stand him up against the wall and say: 
'See here, old sport I Have you ever had any deal- 
ings with the United States Government? Well, we 
have! Uncle Sam's all right ! Get out!' . . . Hello! 
We're there!" 

The train had come to a stop. Outside I could see 
a half-open shed with an appurtenant tobacco-stand, 
apparently floating upon a sea of yellow mud. 

"This is the lower station," announced Jack as the 
men swarmed off the car. "I'm afraid you'll have 
to walk over to the camp. It's not much over half 
a mile. Glad you've got your galoshes." 

Look as far as I could in every direction, there was 
nothing but a welter of ooze. Ahead of us wallowed 
our train companions, the more distant indistinguish- 
able through the rain from the medium in which they 
wallowed. We wallowed after them. It was highly 
uncomfortable. 

"'This isn't war,'" I panted. "'It's murder!'"^^ 

Jack held the umbrella nearer. 

"I guess it's the nearest thing to real war this side 
of the trenches," he answered grimly. "We're well 
used to mud! There can't be anything worse — even 
in Flanders." 

Presently we passed the stable sheds of the new 
remount station, planned to hold thirty thousand 
horses, and round which we could see the guards rid- 

188 



MY SOLDIER SON 

ing like cowboys; then a wilderness of low wooden 
barracks appeared out of the rain, and we found our- 
selves unexpectedly walking on firm macadam down 
a street that looked something like an apotheosized 
mining-camp and which was marked Third Avenue." 

Everywhere fellows in imiform were coming and 
going. Fours of newly arrived conscripts tramped 
past under the fearsome direction of a regular non- 
com, and at one point I saw the bleu del and red cap 
of a French officer, who was instructing a bombing 
squad in an open field, the motions of the men pro- 
ducing a strange effect, as if they were playing a com- 
bination of cricket, handball, and tenpins, with a dash 
of jumping-jack. 

We walked along for an interminable distance in 
the rain, past myriads of barracks, all exactly alike, 
until we stopped finally before one with which Jack 
evidently claimed relationship. 

"It's messtime," he said. "We're a bit late as it 
is. I guess we'd better go right in at once." 

Jack conducted me into what somewhat resembled 
the lunch-room of a Western railroad junction, save 
that it was cleaner. All the tables were empty but 
one. Evidently the men had just finished dinner. 
Two fellows about Jack's age were sitting near a 
counter, from behind which the food was lifted from 
the range smoking hot, by a cook in a white coat. I 
was introduced to my son's junior messmates — both 

189 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

second lieutenants — and found that, in spite of my 
experiences in the smoking-car, I had an excellent 
appetite for the plentiful and well-cooked meal that 
was placed before me. 

Our two table companions soon excused themselves, 
and when we had taken our last cup of coffee and had 
had a second helping of pie, Jack led me across the way 
to officers' barracks and into his own ten-by-twelve 
bedroom. Above us the rain drummed steadily on the 
roof. The room was rather close and smelled strongly 
of pine boards. To me it was dull, dreary, and monot- 
onous; yet I could see that for him it was all invested 
with a glamour like that of the Round Table of King 
Arthur. Rain and mud, mud and rain; yet beyond 
that ocean of mud and through that curtain of rain 
there gleamed for him a vision of eternal glory. 

"Do you have any time to yourself. Jack? Aren't 
^ou all tired out?" I queried, though he looked hard 
as nails. 

"I don't have time to think at all," he answered. 
" If I take reveille I get up at five-forty, and if I don't 
take it I get up at quarter to six. Anyhow, I always 
eat breakfast at six-fifteen. From that time on I 
haven't a minute until I hit my bunk, between eleven 
and twelve at night. The amount of detail work is 
something fierce ! I spend nearly a third of my time 
at my desk, writing out reports, making up lists, and 
doing clerical work of one sort or another. 

190 



MY SOLDIER SON 

"Lord, how I sleep! I guess it's a good thing. 
Otherwise I might worry. You see, sometimes a chap 
realizes that he is pretty young to have the responsi- 
bility of two hundred and eighty men of his own age, 
who are just as valuable to their families and to their 
country as he is. Most of those fellows have more 
sense than I have, and just as much education. The 
only difference is that I happened to go to Plattsburg. 
I don't know why I did, at that. I went just because 
my friends were going. I didn't have anything else to 
do particularly. It was a kind of adventure. 'Soldiers 
Three' stuff, you know — that sort of thing. 

"I tell you I woke up with a bump when some of 
the instructors got talking to us up there. The first 
time you do bayonet exercise it's enough to make you 
sick ! You realize what it all means then. I feel pretty 
sure that the man who committed suicide there did 
so because the horror of the whole thing was too much 
for him. It's hard to teach the men 'the will to use 
the bayonet'; that they're sent forward to kill or be 
killed. There is no back step or fencing taught, and 
the only parry is the slight deflection of your oppo- 
nent's point immediately before your own thrust." 

"Do the men appreciate what they are up against?" 

Jack shook his head. 

"I don't think they do," he answered solemnly. 
"That's the worst feature of it. After the dreariness 
of the first few days wears off they get to be like a 

191 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

parcel of kids. They act like a lot of schoolboys. The 
difficulty is to make 'em see the necessity of discipline. 
I have to talk to them like a Dutch uncle. 

"For example, there's a fellow named Coffey in my 
company. Yesterday afternoon he went up and bought 
a package of cigarettes when he knew perfectly well 
he wouldn't have time to get back for inspection — 
didn't think it made any difference, you know ! What 
are you going to do with a fellow like that ? The ques- 
tion is, how are you going to show him that it does 
make a difference? 

"'Look here, Coffey,' I said. *I don't know 
what's the matter with you. I don't want to punish 
you. What I want is to make you see that some time 
or other, unless you realize that absolute obedience 
to orders is a matter of life and death, you are going 
to put yourself and all of us in a hole. When we get 
over in a trench, sixty yards opposite the Germans, 
and the order is given for us to go over and clean 
'em out, you've got to be there — not off buying a pack- 
age of fags. Nobody is going to wait for you then. 
Now, as I said, I don't want to punish you, but I don't 
know of any other way to bring it home to you that 
the safety of all of us depends on your strict obedience 
to orders. You go down and saw wood for three 
hours!'" 

"How many of your own friends volunteered?" I 
asked. 

192 



MY SOLDIER SON 

"All of them," he answered instantly. "Every one 
of the fellows I know either went to Plattsburg and 
got a commission or have volunteered. They just did 
it as a matter of course — without thinking anything 
about it especially. I don't know any college men of 
the right age who haven't, except one or two cripples. 
Out of the New York Harvard Club's full membership 
of forty-eight hundred, old and young, there are nearly 
a thousand men in active service in the army and navy 
and several hundred more engaged in some sort of war 
service — almost a perfect record for the men of mili- 
tary age. 

"It's Just the same with all the other colleges and 
college clubs, all the fellows have come up to the 
scratch. It's what you'd expect, of course. The only 
ones who make me sore — when we're so much in need 
of officers — are the few chaps just over age who are 
perfectly well and fit — athletes, some of 'em — who've 
got jobs of one sort or another down in Washington, 
when they could be going across. I wouldn't mind if 
they didn't pretend to be doing something. What I 
kick at is the able-bodied fellow of thirty-five who's 
got a clerical job in the War Department and is 
camouflaging behind a desk in a uniform, instead of 
drilling a machine-gun squad or teaching his men how 
to cut through barbed wire. 

"Then there's the husky young athlete who goes into 
the remount business and is busily engaged in buying 

193 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

horses out in Kansas, where he is fairly safe from the 
U-boats, and the perfectly able-bodied Y. M. C. A. 
worker who is drawing a salary to teach the soldiers 
how to play football. That last is wonderful work, 
but they should utilize much older men or fellows who 
have some physical defect, instead of chaps who ought 
to be in the ranks." 

"The slackers will be the losers, Jack," I assured 
him. 

"But they may never know it," he answered. 
"They certainly won't realize what they've missed. 
They couldn't !" He turned to me eagerly. "Father ! 
Life's an entirely different thing to me since I came 
down here. What I've learned in the last six weeks 
has changed every idea I've ever had. The friend- 
ships I've made would be enough to pay for every- 
thing. You know, up at college we had a pretty low 
standard. It was all right enough in its way, but 
there was a lot of petty meanness and imputing rotten 
motives. Well, here we're all brothers, and we know 
that we can count on each other and on the men — 
every last one of them. I didn't used to have a very 
high opinion of human nature, but now with these 
friends I've made and my new knowledge of the men 
I used to regard as muckers I realize how fine it is — 
and that it's well worth dying for!" 

As we ploughed back through the mud to the lower 
station I still couldn't bring myself to realize that 

194 



MY SOLDIER SON 

this serious-minded young oflScer was my son. It 
seemed preposterous! It was wholly incredible that 
this was the silly ass who had strung crockery on a 
belfry. Here was a fully equipped oflBcer, keenly alive 
to all his obligations and responsibilities, produced in a 
little over three months of intensive training. In the 
face of such a miracle, why had I ever bothered about 
college ? 

And then it came to me that perhaps the college 
education had unconsciously had something to do 
with it. I thought of the Teddy-bear at home and of 
Helen, still almost fresh as a girl! Was it possible 
that I had a son old enough to go to war? Was I as 
old as all that? Yes; a thousand years old! As old 
as Methuselah, to every intent and useful purpose, 
for I could no longer bear arms in defense of what 
I held most dear and sacred. The sword had passed 
to my son and he was now the head of the family. 
By every tradition and every law he now came 
first. 

I wonder if there is some peculiar adaptability in the 
newer blood of our hybrid race that makes it possible 
in three months to produce a thousand youths capa- 
ble of training an army. Was Bryan merely talking 
when he prophesied a million men springing to arms 
overnight? Probably there is an inherited gift for 
leadership in the Anglo-Saxon that has made it easier 
for us. Jack told us a story illustrating that gift 

195 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

about a young English officer in Flanders who, to the 
great disgust of his men, always wore a monocle. 
This elegant stripling would come out of his dugout 
of a morning for inspection, yawn, stretch, insert his 
eye-glass, and, after glancing over the battalion, re- 
mark casually: "You may carry on, sergeant — carry 
on!" 

One morning he made his appearance as usual to 
find that each man had cut the identification tag off 
his wrist and was wearing it in his right eye — a bat- 
talion of monocled soldiers! The young captain put 
on his own eye-glass, stared at them for a moment, 
then dropped the monocle into the palm of his hand, 
spun it in the air with his thumb, made a free catch 
of it in his eye, straightened up, looked at them sternly 
and said: "Now, you bloomin' blighters, can you do 
that?" 

It is a fortunate thing for the world that this war 
is to be fought out by the young. They are going 
into it courageously and gladly; gayly like the two boys 
who fell leading the charge at Fontenoy, and of whom 
the old French chronicler wrote: "They were very 
noble — they cared nothing for their lives!" For 
them war is a thing of romance and of glory, for them 
the sword still sings: 

"The War-Thing, the Comrade, 
Father of honor 
And giver of kingship, 

196 



MY SOLDIER SON 

The fame-smith, the song master. 
Clear singing, clean slicing, 
Sweet spoken, soft finishing. 
Making death beautiful, 
Life but a coin 
To be staked in the pastime 
Whose playing is more 
Than the transfer of being; 
Arch-anarch, chief builder, 
Prince and evangelist, 
I am the Will of God: 
I am the Sword." 



The change the war has wrought in Jack it has 
wrought in hundreds of thousands of other hitherto 
careless boys. No one can look at the fellows in uni- 
form, however young, without realizing that they have 
something of the nobility and gravity that always 
comes to those who hold their lives secondary to the 
cause they serve. 

It is true that most of them carry it lightly. 
"What's the use of worrying?" But all the same 
they know what they are up against and they are not 
going into it as an adventure. Their example has stiff- 
ened the backbone of all the rest of us. The man 
who is not in uniform is anxious to show that it is not 
his fault he isn't. It has made men ashamed to be 
any less decent than the chaps who are going to fight 
for them. Wearing the uniform has also done a good 
deal to reduce the amount of drinking among the 
younger men at an age when taking a drink is still 

197 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

regarded as a sign of emancipation. On the other 
hand, we may become a race of chronic cigarette 
fiends. But no one can question that the health of 
the nation must improve as a result of the training our 
boys are receiving and the effect of their example upon 
the civilian population. That and the reduction in 
individual food consumption may give us a concave 
national waist-line. Even the sight of Walter Camp's 
adipose office-holders going through their matutinal 
exercises in Washington was not without its inspira- 
tion. Unconsciously a lot of us are already in train- 
ing; and before long most of us will be so consciously. 

In the East, at any rate, practically all the bo}'S 
who have prepared for or gone to college and are of 
the proper military age have enlisted or received of- 
ficers' commissions. They are not taking the chance 
of being relegated after the war to the class that didn't 
go. For their generation it is probably true that 
hereafter there will be in effect only two sorts — those 
who went and those who didn't. No boy of twenty 
in this part of the world is willing to invite the sus- 
picion of being a coward or even to have said to him 
as Henry IV wrote to Crillon: Go hang yourself, 
brave Crillon; you were not with me at ArquesI" 

Some of Jack's friends whose eyes are bad or who 
have some other physical limitation have tried and 
been rejected over and over again — one as many as 
eleven times. If nothing else was open to them they 

198 



MY SOLDIER SON 

have secured work in the Y. M. C. A., Red Cross, or 
War Rehef on the other side. Aheady the boy of 
military age is conspicuous by his absence in New 
York City — unless he is in uniform. The girls are 
sending them. "No slackers need apply!" is their 
motto. They won't dance with anybody not in uni- 
form. Why should they? 

My own feeling is that the best thing that could 
happen to this country after its half-century of finan- 
cial drunkenness would be compulsory military train- 
ing. It is not so bad now for fellows like Jack, whose 
parents can send them out of the city to country 
boarding-schools and afterward to college, where they 
will get plenty of athletics; but think what army life 
would mean for the city boys who otherwise would be 
working indoors in banks and factories ! Think, too, 
what it would do for Jack and his like in the way of 
discipline and making men of them ! Then we should 
not need a full year to put an army of two hundred and 
fifty thousand men in the field, and we might have 
enough rifles to go round. 

I sometimes wonder what the ultimate effect of the 
fierce life of the trenches, particularly if the war con- 
tinues for several years, will be upon the youth of this 
country. Dr. Alexis Carrel tells me that the war has 
produced in France a race of warriors — men who eat, 
sleep, and think only in terms of war. He says that 
one day, while on his way from one part of the front 

199 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

to another, as he passed through a half-ruined village, 
he was hailed by a burly whiskered soldier, in a major's 
uniform, who was leaning against a shattered wall. 

"It was my old friend X.," he explained with 
a smile, "though at first I failed to recognize him. 
When I had last seen him he was a clerk in the Credit 
Lyonnais. He had been shy, anaemic, narrow-chested, 
clean-shaved. Now he was vigorous and masterful. 
Moreover, he had a huge beard, which added to the 
fierceness of his appearance. He had lost all interest 
in anything except fighting, and could talk of nothing 
else. The years prior to the war no longer counted 
for him. He had become a gladiator. He will never 
be anything else. When the war is over he will spend 
the rest of his life reliving the 'battles, sieges, fortunes,' 
he has passed through." 

"But they are not all like that!" I protested. 
"How about the young men and the boys?" 

"X. is not an unusual case," he answered; "there 
will be many like him. For the youth of France — 
those who are left — the war has done much. It has 
sobered them and taught them to bring their wills 
and their bodies into subjection. It will mean a great 
deal to France to have the rising generation know the 
value of discipline and the necessity of obedience to 
authority." 

"Do you think the war will have the same bene- 
ficial effect on American youth?" I asked. 

200 



MY SOLDIER SON 

"Undoubtedly!" he replied. "Your young men 
will come back with a new respect for law and order; 
a new regard for their government; a keener appre- 
ciation of the ideals which that government repre- 
sents." 

I hope that Dr. Carrel is right. Certainly they will 
return with a new and broader outlook, a sense of 
solidarity as Americans, and a militant patriotism that 
will bode ill for any purveyor of sedition, however 
insidious his methods. 

But I cannot see these young men of ours, after 
the excitement of trench raiding and fighting above 
the clouds, settling down very speedily to desk work 
in office-buildings, however airy. Neither, will they 
be wiUing, the majority of them, to resume the threads 
of their interrupted education. There will be a new 
movement toward the ever-vanishing frontier, a setting 
westward in the search for wider ranges, for life in the 
open air. 

"So for one the wet sail arching through the rainbow round the 
bow; 
And for one the creak of snow-shoes on the crust; 
And for one the lake-side lilies where the bull moose waits the 
cow. 
And for one the mule-train coughing in the dust." 

We reached the shed twenty minutes before train 
time, and sat down on a damp bench under a smoking 
kerosene-lamp. Over our heads the rain drove upon 

201 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

the roof in a never-ceasing tattoo. Jack was inhaling 
the omnipresent cigarette. A pall — I believe that is 
the word — had fallen upon our conversation, engen- 
dered by our mutual consciousness that all this mere 
informative talk was beside the mark. 

I hadn't come down there in the mud to try the 
beef and test the beds. I knew it and he knew it. The 
beds and the beef had nothing to do with what had 
been uppermost in our minds and hearts all day. But 
the words wouldn't come. Jack lit another cigarette 
and changed his position, and a water-soaked tramp 
edged in and slumped down in the corner, with his 
head on his chest. More than ten minutes had gone 
by. Then Jack suddenly said awkwardly: 

"I suppose you and mother would like to know 
before I go what I think about things — religious things, 
you know. Some of us get together by ourselves here 
and talk them over now and then. We didn't before 
we came. But, you see, we all can't help knowing, 
of course, that we mayn't come back; and — and — so 
you wonder if there would be anything else afterward 
if you didn't." 

I nodded. It had come. 

"Well, honestly, dad" — how sweet the word was! — 
"I don't know. I haven't much faith, I guess, of the 
orthodox kind; but I can't help feeling that it doesn't 
make much difference so long as you know that you're 
doing the right thing." 

202 



MY SOLDIER SON 

"No," I muttered. "But how do you know it*s 
the right thing?" 

He shook his head. 

"But I do know it!" he said. "To fight— to die— 
for one's country is bound to be the right thing. It 
doesn't matter that I can't tell you why. It's the 
thing itself that's worth while — not the reason." 

In the grimy old shed I put my arm about his strong 
young shoulders. 

"Listen, Jack," I whispered, though the tramp was 
oblivious of our presence. "Years ago I heard a 
Memorial Day address by Judge Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, and it made such an impression on me that 
I learned it by heart. It is the answer to my question. 
What he said was this: 

" * I do not know what is true. I do not know the 
meaning of the universe. But in the midst of doubt, 
in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing I do not 
doubt — that no man who lives in the same world with 
most of us can doubt — and that is that the faith is 
true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away 
his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a 
cause which he little understands, in a plan of cam- 
paign of which he has no notion, under tactics of which 
he does not see the use ! ' " 

Jack made no reply. 

"'For high and dangerous action,'" I continued, 
"? * teaches us to believe as right beyond dispute things 

203 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

for which our doubting minds are slow to find words 
of proof. Out of heroism grows faith in the w^orth of 
heroism.' " 

The bell beside the track began to ring its staccato 
warning, and above the noise of the rain there came 
the whistle of the up-train. We got to our feet. 

"That's pretty good stuff," he said in an embarrassed 
fashion. "You might send it to me, if you will. I'd 
like the other fellows to see it." 

The sailing of Jack's regiment was a topic never 
referred to by us, save indirectly. Sometimes Helen 
would begin a sentence and abruptly discontinue it, 
such as, "I suppose he'll need — " And I would have 
verbal evidence of what she was thinking of in addition 
to the pile of neat packages and bundles that gradually 
accumulated on the hall-table for Jack to take away 
when he should come to say good-by. But we had a 
sneaking idea that maybe it wouldn't be necessary 
for him to go after all. 

Down-town they were saying that the war would 
be over in six weeks — in three months, anyway. News 
of a peace conference might come at any moment. 
Germany, it was predicted with confidence, had no 
wish permanently to antagonize the United States, 
and would see to it that hostilities would be over long 
before our boys could get within range of the guns. 
That hope was always shining through the gray clouds 

204 



MY SOLDIER SON 

of our depression. And we were so proud of him that 
we'd hardly condescend to speak to those of our friends 
who hadn't a service-flag with at least one star on it. 

Being the father or the mother of a soldier is the 
next thing to being one yourself. Unconsciously I 
aped Jack's manner of standing, and walked and talked 
in a military sort of way, arrogating to myself a special 
knowledge of the purposes of the War Department 
by virtue of my vicarious connection with the service. 
We didn't more than half believe that anything more 
would come of it. Germany would probably back 
down at the last minute and there would be all the 
honor and glory without any actual fighting, and Uncle 
Sam would be sitting at the head of a Thanksgiving 
peace table, handing around slices of Turkey as he 
saw fit. 

Of course I knew the transports were sailing right 
along, and that we had thousands of troops on the 
other side; but that knowledge was literary rather 
than actual. It was like the background on an enlist- 
ment poster. The phrase "Our boys are already in 
the trenches" didn't mean anything more to us than 
"Food is Ammunition," or "Ring It Again!" You 
can't have your boy lounging in a brand-new uniform, 
smoking a cigarette by the library fire, with the sun 
pouring in through the Seventy-second Street window, 
and grasp the fact that in three weeks he may be sitting 
in a listening post within ten yards of a gang of Prus- 

205 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

sians who would cut his throat rather than bother to 
take him prisoner. You can't do it. You don't be- 
lieve any of it. Things like that might happen to other 
men's sons, but never to yours. So we dreamed on, 
as the sailing was postponed from week to week. 

Then late one afternoon, a message came that if 
I wished to see my son before he sailed the next morn- 
ing I must immediately present myself at a certain 
place, and receive the special written authority to 
accompany him aboard the transport which had been 
accorded to me by the War Department. I hung up 
the receiver weakly. That curt voice on the other 
end of the wire had paralyzed my motor centres. They 
couldn't be going to ship him off like that, without 
giving him a chance to say good-by to his mother! 
It wasn't human! But I had no time to waste if I 
was to meet him, for the place of embarkation was a 
long distance from New York City. 

I scribbled a hurried note for Helen, who was down- 
town, put the bundles and packages in a valise, sum- 
moned a taxi, and within an hour had been given my 
pass and full instructions as to what I must do. I 
took a train to a certain nameless town, and shortly 
before midnight was hurrying down a side street lead- 
ing to an empty railroad yard near the water-front. 

I can see every detail of it as vividly now as I could 
then. Night after night I find myself there in my 
dreams. It is always the same — my sufferings are 

206 



MY SOLDIER SON 

the same. I am stumbling along in the dark in my 
fur coat, carrying my bag, when out of the shadows a 
vague figure lurches forward and holds a bayoneted 
rifle against my chest. Under the yellow circle of a 
flash-light my letter of identification and pass are ex- 
amined and I am told to pass on. Half a block farther 
along I am stopped again and the process is repeated. 
Once more, and at last I am turned loose into the net- 
work of tracks where the trains are to come in. 

Over on the other side half a dozen forms are stand- 
ing around a small fire, and I clamber across the rail- 
road-ties and make myself known to them. They 
are transportation officers and express surprise at the 
permission granted me. I mention the name of my 
partner Morris. "Oh, Morris!" — that explains it. 
Apparently he is some sort of hidden power who 
lurks behind the arras at Washington. They show 
great respect for Morris's partner, and I hand round 
cigars, inquiring when the train is expected. The 
senior oflBcer says it ought to be in in about an hour — 
it is due already; but they had a hot box or something. 
He expresses unmitigated contempt for the railroad cor- 
poration whose enforced hospitality we are enjoying. 

It is cold and we huddle together, warming our 
finger-joints over the tiny blaze — a large one might 
attract attention; for the government has succeeded 
in keeping the location of the place a secret and no 
one may approach within half a mile without proper 

207 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

identification. We talk of things military and naval 
in a desultory way. The transportation oflBcer thinks 
the war will last not less than five — very probably ten 
years. I am just recovering from the shock of his 
prophecy when a green semaphore swings up at the 
lower end of the yard. "Train's coming!" he says, 
and we all hasten after him down the track. 

Round a curve chugs an old-fashioned locomotive 
with a dirty headlight. It stops, jerks, and heaves 
again, banging the cars together behind it like empty 
coal-scuttles. There is no light except in the driver's 
cab; every car-window is tightly closed, with curtains 
drawn. Slowly the antediluvian engine, with its 
antiquated smoke-stack, yanks its burden into the 
middle of the yard and, with a final cough, relapses 
into silence. 

No sound comes from inside the cars, though 
cracks of light are visible round the edges of the win- 
dows. Are there really men inside, or is it a chain of 
"empties"? The oflBcer climbs to the platform and 
pokes his head into one of the cars. A rookie appears 
and swings down to the ground, followed by a dozen 
others, who move toward the engine. They are the 
baggage-squad charged with the duty of transporting 
the soldiers' kits to the waiting steamer. 

Where is Jack? I begin to be impatient. The 
quiet is getting on my nerves. No one speaks above 
a whisper. One of the oflScers taps me on the shoul- 

208 



MY SOLDIER SON 

der, leads me to one of the farther cars, and goes in- 
side. In a few moments he comes back with a tall, 
coated figm-e. The form doesn't look natural, some- 
how. Then two hands are clapped on my shoulders 
and Jack's voice whispers: "Hello, sir ! Bully of you to 
come ! Sorry I couldn't see mother again. But you'll 
explain to her, won't you?" 

Together we stand in silence under the canopy of 
stars, as one by one the sleepy men drop off the steps 
of the car and form in loose lines outside. Jack leans 
over and tells me that the boys are all very tired; 
that the cars are of the vintage of 1875 — exhumed 
from some forgotten limbo for this purpose — and 
practically without ventilation. Do I know where he 
could buy them some coffee? I shake my head. Ap- 
parently no provision has been made for any refresh- 
ment at this stage of their journey. Lights flash here 
and there about the yard. The pile of luggage has 
melted away. The fire has died out. 

A noncom hurries up and says something to Jack 
in a low tone. There is a movement of expectation 
along the waiting line of men, which stiffens up and 
shuffles together. There is a muffled word of com- 
mand; the line faces toward the right and the men 
march off in single file. I follow along with Jack, who 
has taken my bag away from me and tucked his arm 
under mine. We feel our way along the yard, skirt 
a pile of coal, stumble across a vacant lot covered with 

209 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

empty tin cans and clinkers, and come to a wharf at 
which is tied up an ancient side-wheel steamer belong- 
ing to a bygone era of navigation. She shows no 
lights except a riding light. Her decks are empty. 

We mount the gang-plank and pile into the dingy 
saloon. Kerosene-lamps are smoking in brackets 
along the walls, the wmdow-shades are closely drawn. 
It is dank and stuffy in there, but the fellows begin 
to joke, referring to the old tub as the Mayflower. 
I have a strange feeling of unreality. This is not my 
idea of a departure at all. It is more like the aftermath 
of a Yale-Harvard game, the anticlimax of coming 
back in a crowded smoking-car after it is all over. 
The men compose themselves in various attitudes of 
discomfort and try to go to sleep. Many lie down on 
the floor. Three repose at full length on the table in 
the centre. I try unsuccessfully to think of something 
to say to Jack. 

At the end of forty-five minutes we hear the gang- 
plank being run in and there is a jingle from the 
engine-room. The wheels begin to turn and the old 
side-wheeler begins to strain and groan. From for- 
ward the transportation officer beckons us to join him 
and we ascend to the pilot-house, where we find seven 
or eight others. All is darkness, except for the aura 
round the binnacle and the glowing tips of the ciga- 
rettes. 

We are about a quarter of a mile from shore and 
210 



MY SOLDIER SON 

moving quite rapidly. A hundred yards ahead in the 
starlight I can make out the narrow hull of a destroyer, 
which leaves a sharp, white wake in which we follow. 
Here and there are scattered lights — distant win- 
dows along the water-front. We light one cigarette 
after another, and I produce a couple of pounds of 
cake chocolate, which is quickly and gratefully con- 
sumed. 

The time drags slowly. The shore fades out, then 
draws near again. Sometimes there are many lights; 
sometimes almost none. We pass a lighthouse. I 
recognize and then . Then I recognize every- 
thing at once. I know where we are. A faint pale line 
begins to show along the horizon and the side-wheeler 
staggers against the chop made by the tide running 
against the wind. 

We turn, and just ahead I see the huge gray bulk 
of a converted German ocean-liner against a pier. 
The destroyer has swung away, running free of us in 
a wide circle. Behind us I now discover three other 
similarly convoyed side-wheelers. From the smoke- 
stacks of the transport the smoke is pouring in dense 
masses, but no lights gleam from her port-holes. She 
is simply a black blot against the sky-line. The of- 
ficers say good-by to me; we leave the pilot-house and 
go back to the saloon. 

"All right, boys!" says Jack. "A couple of hours 
more and you can get your phonographs going." 

211 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

" Rather set my jaws going ! " retorts a fat boy, and 
the crowd laughs good-naturedly. 

The steamer bumps against the wharf and the 
gang-plank is run out. The men pick up their rifles 
and adjust their clothes. Jack and I lead the way on 
to the dock, on the opposite side of which yawns the 
black hole in the side of the transport. The company 
files off one boat and directly on to the other, where 
each man is handed a slip with the number and loca- 
tion of his berth. 

The system is perfect; the embarkation takes place 
almost in silence. 

"Well, father!" 

Jack has turned to me and, smiling and happy, 
lays his arm on my shoulder. The moment has come, 
then. What shall I say? There was so much of en- 
couragement and affection that I had carefully planned 
to put into my parting speech — how we were all so 
proud of him and would think of him every moment 
until his return; how, of course, he would return — 
the war certainly would be over soon; and how we 
knew he'd do his duty; and so on. 

How fatuous it would all sound ! He knows every- 
thing I want to say — perfectly well. There is nothing 
to make a fuss about. Yet I can't let him go like that 
— just like that — without saying anything! While 
I hesitate, a private hurries up and, first saluting him, 
touches Jack upon the arm. 

212 



MY SOLDIER SON 

"Capt. Stanton, the colonel wants you!" 

"All right !" answers Jack. He bends over quickly 
and touches his lips to my cheek. 

"Good-by!" he exclaims cheerfully. "Kiss mother 
for me — and Margery ! " 

" Good-by, Jack ! I hope — never mind ! Good-by, 
old fellow!— Oh, Jack " 

But he has gone. 

The last company marches aboard and the sliding- 
door is pulled to. The smoke is coming even thicker 
now from the transport's funnels, and there is a white 
froth rising from beneath her stern. Silently the 
hawsers are slipped. Over behind the city's castellated 
sky-line there is a yellow glow, and the water of the 
river is tinted with purple. A cold wind creeps round 
my ankles. It is chilly after the warm pilot-house. 

Slowly the great leviathan separates herself from 
the wharf and backs away, out into midstream. Not 
a light is visible. Not a man is above deck. She looks 
like an interned empty German liner whose mooring 
is being shifted. Yet inside her black hulk ten thou- 
sand of the youth of America are starting on their 
great crusade for the maintenance of humanity — that 
freedom shall not perish from the earth. 



213 



VII 
WHY JACK HAS GONE 

" So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the 
law of liberty. For he shall have judgment without mercy that 
hath showed no mercy * * * ." James ii : 12, 13. 

Why have I sent my son across the seas to fight? 

Two years ago, on the Sunday following the torpe- 
doing of the Lusitania, a party of sixteen people was 
assembled at luncheon in the Long Island country house 
of a distinguished New York lawyer. Inevitably the 
sole topic of conversation was the attitude the United 
States should adopt toward the German Government, 
which had thus wantonly murdered so many helpless 
American men, women, and children. Of those pres- 
ent several were jurists of wide reputation or persons 
of more than ordinary intelligence and standing in 
the community. After a lengthy, general discussion 
of that barbaric act, I remember saying that I wished 
that our government would immediately declare war 
upon Germany or, at least, sever diplomatic relations 
pending what reparation was possible and adequate 
guarantees that such methods of warfare should be 
discontinued. To my surprise there was little echo 

214 



WHY JACK HAS GONE 

to these sentiments, and upon my asking our host to 
submit the question to a vote of those at the table, 
only one other man and his wife agreed with me and 
mine. 

Our friend smiled tolerantly. 

"How could war prove anything but an inconceiva- 
ble disaster!" he remarked, as he pushed back his 
chair. "It must be the last — and only the last — 
resort." 

That already seems a lifetime ago. My friend, as 
he readily admits, neither knew what he knows now 
nor conceived it to be possible. Had he done so he 
would have been then, as I was, for war. To-day that 
same middle-aged lawyer — that conservative stand- 
patter — is touring the country stimulating by his elo- 
quence hundreds, if not thousands, to enlist. He is 
for the war — to a finish. For peace only with victory. 

I do not say that my friend is a different man, but 
he is an outraged one. He exercises still the discrim- 
inating processes of mind that have made him a leader 
of the bar, and which enabled him to weigh more or 
less calmly the specious arguments advanced by Ger- 
many for her ruthless undersea warfare. The mental 
habits of a lifetime rendered him incapable of adopt- 
ing any other attitude toward Germany than that 
which he would have maintained toward a fellow prac- 
titioner in a court of justice — that of courteous con- 
sideration. He was accustomed to give every devil 

215 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

his due. He assumed that even if the German General 
Staff were, as matter of law, guilty of piracy or murder, 
their guilt was due to a mistake in, or at least a colora- 
ble construction of, the law upon their part — that they 
had, as we would have expressed it, some sort of "a 
case." 

Then suddenly he discovered that he had made an 
almost incredible mistake. He awoke to the fact 
that the blows of his opponent were not accidentally 
but intentionally below the belt, that his adversary 
was not a misguided gentleman but a cold-blooded 
and heartless liar, thief, and murderer. In a word, 
the earthquake has Jarred my friend into a realization 
of the significance of the present struggle, much as 
it did the English, after they had for a year or so 
treated the Germans like "good sports." For we now 
perceive that this war could not have been averted, 
that it was inevitable, and had circumstances been 
such that we could have gone into it at the time of 
the Lusitania incident, peace with victory might be 
ours by now — not merely an optimistic confidence that 
the United States is too populous and too rich and 
too generally lucky not eventually to win. Yet we 
are to-day as a nation almost as hazy over what we 
are up against as my technical lawyer friends were 
two years ago, when they pondered so solemnly Ger- 
many's camouflage about international law. 

For while technically the violating of our rights 
216 



WHY JACK HAS GONE 

as neutrals may have been the basis of our declaration 
of war against Germany in 1917, just as it was of the 
war of 1812 with England, and, before that, with the 
Barbary pirates, we are actually engaged in a death 
grapple v/ith a malign and conscienceless enemy for 
the ideals of Christianity as against those of a cruel 
and remorseless paganism. 

We had regarded Germany as a Christian nation 
whose people believed, as we believe, in the love of 
God for all men, and in that of all men for each other. 
We had read the output of her political philosophers 
with a half-amused tolerance, accepting them as the 
mere theories of intellectuals as we had the meta- 
physics of her scholars. It was as if some friend of 
ours had said half jocularly: "Well, you know that 
I'm really an anarchist." We would have believed it 
about as much. We felt that, after all, beneath his 
bullymg manner — his habit of unpnntrsn — the Teuton 
had a warm and generous heart. We could not and 
most of us do not even to-day realize that the teach- 
ings of Treitschke, Nietzsche, and Bernhardi — consti- 
tuting the "Religion of Valor" — the inhuman doc- 
trine of might as right — is "inspired by the pulpits 
as religion; taught by the universities as philosophy; 
disseminated by the press as policy and political ne- 
cessity; embodied in the army as national loyalty 
and duty, and focussed in the Kaiser as the minister 
of the Almighty." 

217 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

What is this philosophy or reUglon? — this "Ger- 
man Idea"? It is the doctrine that as between states 
or nations there is no such thing as law or morals; 
that in the struggle for existence between them war is 
the supreme and necessary test by which the "fitness" 
of the survivor must be determined, and that in 
making war the state need recognize neither truth, 
decency, nor humanity. 

Curiously enough, it was from my lawyer friend 
that I learned this. 

I had gone to dine with him in order that we might 
quietly discuss the best method of brmging home to 
the people of the United States the necessity of our 
rendering prompt and substantial aid to the Allies, 
and we had retired to his library after a frugal meal 
quite unlike the lavish hospitality of former years. 
We still had our pipes, however. 

"Stanton," he said gravely as he handed me the 
matches, "there are two essentials in the campaign 
of education which you have imdertaken. The first 
is to convince people that the strictest economy must 
be practised if we are to win the war; the second, sur- 
prising as it may seem, is that we must win the war — 
that no half-way decision is possible — that only a 
peace forced upon a vanquished Germany will end 
the struggle." 

"Don't you think that the people at large under- 
stand the necessity of victory?" I inquired. 

218 



WHY JACK HAS GONE 

"No," he replied with earnestness, "I do not. I 
even doubt if you do." 

"What do you mean?" I demanded. 

"I mean that, while Washington is alive to the 
situation, the people as a whole are not, and that in- 
dividually few of us have grasped the fact that Ger- 
man poHtical philosophy and military practice are 
one and the same. For example, you recall the tur- 
moil occasioned by Bethmann-Hollweg's reference to 
a treaty being only 'a scrap of paper'? Well, that 
was no new thing. It is part of the German creed. 
The cardinal principle of their statecraft is deceit. 
Bethmann-Hollweg's now historic phrase is nothing 
but the echo of the declaration of Frederick William 
IV in his speech from the throne on April 11, 1847, 
when he said, 'All written constitutions are only 
"scraps of paper.'" The scrap-of-paper theory 
as well as the phrase itself is an old story in Ger- 
man diplomacy." 

"That is rather interesting," I admitted. "And, 
I confess, new to me. But that sort of thing isn't 
sincere, is it? I assumed it was mere bluster." 

My friend laughed. 

" Not much. It's gospel ! I've been making a 
rather careful study of the statements, written and 
deUvered, of Germany's rulers, statesmen, and mili- 
tary leaders, with respect to her aims, policies, and the 
conduct of war. I propose printing my researches 

219 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

some time for the benefit of the public." * He grew 
suddenly stern. 

"I tell you," he added fiercely, "we are contend- 
ing against the most damnable philosophy that ever 
poisoned the body politic of a civilized people! In 
international relations no such thing as truth or honor 
is recognized." 

"Do you actually mean to say that the Germans 
do not recognize any sanctions of law or morals what- 
soever so far as the state is concerned?" I asked, for 
the proposition seemed to me preposterous. 

"Precisely," he answered. "That is elementary 
with them. Their fundamental principle is that, ac- 
cording to the laws of evolution by which the world 
is governed, the Hohenzollerns by divine right should 
rule Prussia; that Prussia for the good of Germany 
should rule Germany; and that Germany for the good 
of the world should rule the world. Any means to 
accomplish that end are moral." 

"Is that what they mean by 'Kultur'?" I asked. 

"'Kultur,' he quoted, "*is the spiritual organiza- 
tion of the world, which does not exclude bloody 
savagery. It raises the demonic to sublimity. It is 
above morality, reason, science.' " f 

"What nonsense!" I ejaculated. 

* "Out of Their Own Mouths " (D. Appleton & Co., New York, 
1917), from which admirable compilation much of the material for 
this chapter has been taken. 

t Mann in the Neiie Rundschau for November, 1914. 

220 



WHY JACK HAS GOxNE 

" Nonsense ? By no means ! Hear what the dis- 
tinguished Professor Lasson* has to say on the sub- 
ject: 

" ' Between states there is but one sort of right — 
the right of the stronger. . . . 

" 'There is no legal obligation upon a state to ob- 
serve treaties. . . . 

" *A state cannot commit a crime. . . . 

"'Treaty rights are governed wholly by considera- 
tions of advantage. . . . 

" 'A so-called small state is not a state at all, but 
only a tolerated community, which absurdly pretends 
to be a state. . . . 

"'The weak are prone to cherish a comforting be- 
lief in the inviolability of the treaties that assure them 
their miserable existence. But one of the functions 
of war is to prove to them that a treaty may be a bad 
one, that circumstances may have changed. There is 
only one guaranty — adequate military force. . . .* 

"Heinrich von Treitschke, the most influential 
political philosopher of Germany during the last cen- 
tury, like his great pupil Bernhardi, taught that war 
was a biological necessity, f that any attempt to abol- 
ish it was unwise and unmoral, and that it should be 
ruthless to the last degree, . . . saying 'for the state 

* Das KuUurideal unter dem Krieg, pp. 11-13, 31, 32, 61, 105, 
130. 

t " PoUtik," vol. I, p. 100. 

221 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

self-assertion is the greatest of the commandments; 
for it, this is absolutely moral. And for this reason 
it must be declared that of all political sins the most 
abominable and the most contemptible is weakness; 
this is, in politics, the sin against the Holy Ghost.' 
'The living God,' he assures us, 'will take care that 
war shall always return as a terrible medicine for the 
human race.' 

"Vernon Kellogg, who saw a great deal of the Ger- 
man General StafP when the Great Headquarters — 
Grosses Hauptquartier — of all the German armies of 
the west was in the Ardennes — where often the 'All- 
Highest' was there in person — says,* in explanation 
of his conversion from pacifism: 

"'Professor von Flussen — that is not his name — 
is a biologist. So am I. So we talked out the biological 
argument for war, and especially for this war. The 
captain-professor has a logically constructed argument 
why, for the good of the world, there should be this 
war, and why, for the good of the world, the Germans 
should win it, win it completely and terribly. Unfor- 
tunately, for the peace of our evenings, I was never 
convinced. That is, never convinced that for the good 
of the world the Germans should win this war, com- 
pletely and terribly. I was convinced, however, that 
this war once begun must be fought to a finish of de- 
cision — a finish that will determine whether or not 
* Atlantic Monthly, August, 1917. 
222 



WHY JACK HAS GONE 

Germany's point of view is to rule the world. And 
this conviction, thus gained, meant the conversion 
of a pacifist to an ardent supporter, not of war, but 
of this war; of fighting this war to a definite end — 
that end to be Germany's conversion to be a good 
Germany, or not much of any Germany at all. . . . 

" 'The creed of the allmacht of a natural selection 
based on violent and fatal competitive struggle is the 
gospel of the German intellectuals; all else is illusion 
and anathema. ... As with the different ant species, 
struggle — bitter, ruthless struggle — is the rule among 
the different human groups. 

"'This struggle not only must go on, for that is 
the natural law, but it should go on, so that this natural 
law may work out in its cruel, inevitable way the sal- 
vation of the human species. By its salvation is meant 
its desirable natural evolution. That human group 
which is in the most advanced evolutionary stage as 
regards internal organization and form of social re- 
lationship is best, and should, for the sake of the species, 
be preserved at the expense of the less advanced, the 
less eflFective. 

" ' It should win in the struggle for existence, and 
this struggle should occur precisely that the various 
types may be tested, and the best not only preserved, 
but put in position to impose its kind of social organiza- 
tion — its Kultur — on the others, or, alternatively, to 
destroy and replace them. 

223 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"'The danger from Germany is, I have said, that 
the Germans beheve what they say. And they act on 
this belief. Professor von Flussen says that this war is 
necessary as a test of the German position and claim. 
If Germany is beaten, it will prove that she has moved 
along the wrong evolutionary line, and should be beaten. 
If she wins, it will prove that she is on the right way, 
and that the rest of the world, at least that part which 
we and the Allies represent, is on the wrong way and 
should, for the sake of the right evolution of the human 
race, be stopped, and put on the right way — or else 
be destroyed, as unfit. If the wrong and unnatural 
alternative of an Allied victory should obtain, then he 
would prefer to die in the catastrophe and not have 
to live in a world perversely resistant to natural law. 
He means it all. He will act on his belief. He does 
act on it, indeed. He opposes all mercy, all compromise 
with human soft-heartedness. . . . 

" 'There is no reasoning with this sort of thing, 
no finding of any heart or soul in it. There is only 
one kind of answer: resistance by brutal force; war 
to a decision. It is the only argument in rebuttal 
understandable of these men at headquarters into 
whose hands the German people have put their 
destiny. . . .' 

"I confess," continued my friend, "that two years 
ago when you were here I didn't understand this thing. 
I didn't take the Kaiser seriously when I read his 

224 



WHY JACK HAS GONE 

proclamation to the army of the East in 1914. I 
thought it bombast. Well, it was Germany's creed." 

" I forget," said I. " What was it ? " 

He opened a scrap-book. 

" 'Remember that you are the chosen people ! The 
spirit of the Lord has descended upon me because I 
am the Emperor of the Germans ! 

" *I am the instrument of the Almighty. I am his 
sword, his agent. Woe and death to all those who 
shall oppose my will ! Woe and death to those who 
do not believe in my mission ! Woe and death to the 
cowards ! 

"'Let them perish, all the enemies of the German 
people! God demands their destruction, God, who, 
by my mouth, bids you to do his will ! ' 

"Or take this frank confession of Harden's: 'One 
principle only is to be reckoned with — one which sums 
up and includes all others — force ! Boast of that and 
scorn all twaddle. Force ! that is what rmgs loud and 
clear; that is what has distinction and fascination. 
Force, the fist that is everything. . . . Let us drop 
our pitiable efforts to excuse Germany's action; let us 
cease heaping contemptible insults upon the enemy. 
Not against our will were we thrown into this gigantic 
adventure. It was not imposed on us by surprise. 
We willed it; we were bound to will it. We do not 
appear before the tribunal of Europe; we do not 
recognize any such jurisdiction. Our force will create 

225 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

a new law in Europe. It is Germany that strikes. 
When it shall have conquered new fields for its genius, 
then the priests of all the gods will exalt the war as 
blessed.' " * 

"There speaks the truth!" I exclaimed. 

"The truth !" he retorted. "Yes, spoken by a Ger- 
man militarist only in wine, arrogance, or inadvertence. 
To the gospel of force, mendacity, hate, and brutality 
are indispensable. Hence, the German rulers have 
always cultivated hatred of their enemies. War is 
not a society game,' they say, 'war is hell-fire.'" t 

" If war is hell-fire, as this kind of war certainly is," 
I returned with conviction, "what are the men who 
practise it?" 

"I can't tell you," he answered. "I do not think 
that during war they are men at all. They tell me 
that a full-blooded German almost never is tried in 
our criminal courts, but if one does appear there it is 
apt to be for some atrocious form of murder or man- 
slaughter. War seems to transform them into homi- 
cidal maniacs — the mere thought or discussion of it 
to produce an obsession in their minds. Can there 
be any doubt but that hatred and bitterness and ter- 
rorizing make for immediate military effectiveness? 
Of course they do. Yet to what horrors do they lead I 

* Zukunft, August, October, 1914, cited in the New York Times, 
December 6th, 1914. 

t Walter Bloem in the Kolnische Zeitung for February 10th, 
1915. 

226 



WHY JACK HAS GONE 

Let me read you from the diaries of German soldiers 
written during the invasion of Belgium." 

I listened with growing Indignation for several min- 
utes — until I could stand it no longer. 

"Stop! for God's sake, stop!" I begged, half 
nauseated at what he had read me. Was this the 
kind of war to which I had sent our gentle, gallant 
boy across the ocean ! 

My friend raised his eyebrows. 

"It is all done under the personal supervision of 
the Almighty by his personal representative — William 
Hohenzollern — if we are to accept the latter's state- 
ment," said he. "But this William-God or God- 
William partnership Is a very special and private 
affair. Indeed, Professor WUhelm Ostwald has pointed 
this out with unconscious humor in an Interview in 
the Stockholm Dagen, in which he said: *I will say, 
however, that in our country God the Father is re- 
served for the personal use of the Emperor. In one 
instance he was mentioned in a report of the General 
Staff, but it is to be noted that he has not appeared 
there a second time.'" 

I tried to laugh. The whole thing was too fantastic, 
too barbaric, too horrible. I recalled Heine's state- 
ment in "De I'Allemagne, " that while Christianity 
had to a certain extent softened the brutal belligerent 
ardor of the Teuton, It had not been able to destroy 
it; and that when the Cross should be broken, the fe- 

227 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

rocity of the old-time fighters, the frenzied exaltation 
of the Berserkers will again burst forth. "Then," 
he declares with uncanny prophecy, " the old war-gods 
will arise from their legendary tombs and wipe the 
dust of ages from their eyes; Thor will arise with his 
gigantic hammer and demolish the Gothic cathedrals" 

Is there any doubt but that this war is between 
paganism and Christianity? 

In place of the precepts of the gentle Christ in the 
Sermon on the Mount we have Nietzsche's "Thus 
Spake Zarathustra: 

"Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars — and 
the short peace more than the long. 

"Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth every 
war? I say unto you: It is the good war which hal- 
loweth every cause. War and courage have done more 
great things than charity. ... Be not considerate of 
thy neighbor — what thou doest can no one do to thee 
again. Lo, there is no requital. 

"Thou shalt not rob! Thou shalt not slay! — such 
precepts were ever called holy. ... Is there not 
even in all life robbing and slaying? And for such 
precepts to be called holy, was not truth itself there- 
by slain ? . . . 

"This new table, oh, my brethren, put it up over 
you. Become hard." 

The German golden rule is well put by Karl Peters: 
228 



WHY JACK HAS GONE 

"It is foolish to speak of a justice that should hinder 
us from doing to others what we ourselves do not wish 
to suffer from them." * 

The truth of the matter is that Germany is not, 
and has not been for a long time, a Christian nation. 
The Rev. Isaac J, Lansing of Ridgewood, New Jersey, 
in a recent address f has pointed out that in order to 
fulfil the purpose of Germany to dominate the world 
by an army engaged in ruthless war, unrestrained by 
morality and humanity, it became necessary to dis- 
possess the Christian ideals of morals and humanity 
previously held by the German people. The most 
violent and deliberate attacks upon Christianity were 
resorted to in order that this political philosophy 
might penetrate and control the nation. The gospel 
and the life of Christ were assailed as mythical; it was 
declared that the greatest mistake in Germany's his- 
tory was made in accepting Christianity from the 
Roman Empire in the fifth century; that it was an 
alien religion derived from an effete and decadent na- 
tion; that it was foreign to German spirit and genius. 
Treitschke and his millions of followers repudiated the 
Beatitudes and prepared to found a world empire based 
on a new pagan religion, which made it necessary for 
them incidentally to destroy the Scriptures. 

* Not und Weg, pp. 13-14. 

t " What We Are Fighting— and What For," given before The 
Rotary Club of New York City. 

229 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

Now when the German war-lords, statesmen, and 
philosophers embarked upon their attempted con- 
quest of the world they had at their disposal the most 
perfect war-machine ever devised. It was and is a 
marvel of foresight and invention. Their plans had 
been laid for years in the minutest detail. To them 
victory seemed a matter of course — a question of mere 
addition — so many days to Rheims, so many hours 
to Paris. And they would have marched into Paris 
on schedule time, and they would have won the war 
and dominated the world but for a single element 
which they had discounted as of no moment — the 
loyalty of the rest of mankind to the moral ideas which 
these Germans had cast aside as an impediment to 
their development — the ideals commonly referred to 
as Christian — of honor, humanity, and self-sacrifice. 
They would have won the war but for the "scrap of 
paper" and the submarine. 

Though the Kaiser thinks himself a wiser man than 
old Bismarck, had Bismarck been alive Germany would 
have won the war, since Bismarck would never have 
deliberately elected to place his country in what the 
rest of the world regarded as the moral wrong. Speak- 
ing before the Reichstag February 6, 1888, upon the 
question of whether Germany should be the aggressor 
in a war upon Russia, the shrewd old warrior said: 
"If in the end we proceed to attack, the whole weight 
of the imponderables, which weigh much heavier than 

230 



WHY JACK HAS GONE 

material weights, will be on the side of our enemies 
whom we have attacked." 

The imponderables! Justice, truth, pity, charity, 
loyalty — mere ideas — offspring of the brain — and 
heart — not even " scraps of paper," things lighter than 
air — yet more powerful, as the Kaiser has discovered 
to his cost, than the heaviest of Krupp's cannon or the 
best disciplined divisions of "shock" troops; ideas 
that have spread over the whole world — Christian, 
Hebrew, Buddhist, or Mohammedan. 

For when William sought to procure the "Jehad," 
or Holy War, by virtue of which he expected two hun- 
dred and fifty million Mohammedans to fall upon and 
massacre the Christian inhabitants of their lands, he 
found that, with the exception of his vassal Turkey, ev- 
ery Moslem country repudiated his demand although 
the "Jehad" was legally declared by the requisite ec- 
clesiastical authority. Even so, in Armenia two mil- 
lion hapless people have died since the beginning of 
the war, victims of massacre, of torture, of starvation, 
and of the horrors of deportation and slavery. The 
"imponderable" sentiment which this has engendered 
may well prove the millstone which will drag down the 
Kaiser into the turbid stream of everlasting infamy 
and disgrace. 

Yet we are not fighting against the war-lord and 
his military advisers alone — the "military party" of 
which so much has been said in the spoken as well as 

231 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

in tlie written word. At best the militarists could do 
no more than drag an unwilling nation into war. 
They could not have forced whole armies composed of 
adult men to cast aside all the restraints of honor and 
humanity unless those millions had already been in- 
' oculated with the virus of deceit and brutality. For 
the German nation has whole-heartedly and unitedly, 
in a degree to astound civilization, supported its mili- 
tary rulers, and their policy has been universally com- 
mended. No one man, no group of men is responsible 
for this thing. It is due to the ilisidious spread of an 
evil idea which has brought material prosperity to 
a (at heart) materialistic nation. The cause of this 
inconceivably awful slaughter is the irreconcilable 
antagonism of German political philosophy with the 
faith and ideals of the civilized Christian nations of 
the world, and of those nations who while loyal to 
faiths bearing other names, are, nevertheless, follow- 
ers of its principal ethical teachings. 

This atrocious German military philosophy knows 
no mercy and stops at nothing. It frankly believes 
that falsehood, torture, rape, crucifixion, slavery, mas- 
sacre, and murder are justifiable. It laughs at the 
appeal of benevolence and morality. 

A German victory — or an inconclusive peace — 
would mean the ultimate realization of the German 
idea that Germany for the good of the world must 
rule the world. This has been taught in her univer- 

232 



WHY JACK HAS GONE 

sities as philosophy and in her pulpits as religion. 
The German nation unquestioningly accepts it and in- 
tends to force the rest of the world to accept it. This 
is the "Kultur," which they claim is "above morality." 

Kultur teaches that there is only one sort of right — 
that of the stronger. It argues with specious pro- 
fundity that in the relations of nations with one an- 
other there can be no such thing as truth or honor.* 
Frederick the Great taught that the Germans must 
make it their " study to deceive others in order to get 
the better of them."t 

The Germans believe themselves to be a nation of 
supermen and the Kaiser the war-partner — not of the 
God of Humanity — but the "gute alte Gott" of the 
pagan North — the War God — who revels in the shrieks 
of women and the torture of children, in bloodshed and 
cruelty. "I am His sword, His agent!" declares Wil- 
liam Hohenzollern. "Let all the enemies of the Ger- 
man people perish! God demands their destruction 
— God, who by my mouth, bids you do His will !"| 

To accomplish this "divine" will the German mili- 
tary authorities believe that any means are warranted 
— the mowing down of crowds of helpless civilians 
with machine-guns, the cutting off of the breasts of 
women, the battering in of the skulls of the wounded 

* Das Kulturideal unter der Krieg, pp. 11-13, 31, 32, 61, 
105, 130. 

t Works of Frederick II, Berlin Ed., 1S48. 

j Proclamation of the Army of the East, 1914. 

233 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

with rifle-butts. "Be as terrible as Attila's Huns!" 
ordered the Kaiser.* "It is better to let a hundred 
women belonging to the enemy die of hunger than to 
let a single German soldier suffer." f "All prisoners 
are to be put to death," ordered General Stenger, in 
Belgium. t Writes a Bavarian private: "During the 
battle of Budonwiller I did away with four women and 
seven young girls in five minutes. The captain had 
told me to shoot these French sows, but I preferred to 
run my bayonet through them."§ 

This is the concrete result of what the Germans call 
"The Religion of Valor" and "The Gospel of Hate." 
Says one of their spokesmen: "Must Kultur build 
its cathedrals on hills of corpses, seas of tears, and the 
death-rattle of the vanquished ? Yes, it must." H 

If Germany wins the war, the United States will 
either be paying tribute to the Kaiser or German sol- 
diers will be bayoneting American girls and women 
in Jersey City rather than take the trouble to shoot 
them. 

If Germany wins, all our ideals of truth, justice, and 
humanity — which We call Christian — ^will be trodden 
down into bloody mire under the iron heel of the 

*The Kaiser's speech to the Chinese Expeditionary Force, 
July 27, 1900. 

t General von der Goltz, "Ten Iron Commandments of the 
German Soldiers." 

t Orders of the Day, August 26, 1914. 

§ Johann Wenger, Peronne, March 16, 1915. 

II Walter Bloem in the Kolnische Zeitung^, Feb. 10, 1915. 

234 



WHY JACK HAS GONE 

Kaiser's armies, and the coming generation will be 
taught that there is no God but the merciless God of 
Battle who speaks through Germany's treacherous 
tongue and by her brutal sword. 

We are fighting for far more than our lives. We 
are fighting for the future of the race. We are fighting 
to turn back the bloody tide of tyranny and barbarism. 
We are fighting for our faith in the Fatherhood of 
God and in the Brotherhood of Man. 

That is why Jack has gone. 



235 



VIII 

"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS— OF SEALING- 
WAX " 

"Not a wheel must turn, not a human back be bent in the 
production of non-essentials until the war is won ! Not a brick 
must be laid, not a beam lifted into place, not a shovelful of 
earth displaced in private or corporate construction until the 
shipyards and munition-factories have their full quota of work- 
ers. The use and manufacture of luxuries and unnecessaries 
must cease. Just as our soldiers at the front must be drilled 
and disciplined in order to defeat the Germans, so the nation 
at home must be drilled and disciplined into a great universal 
army of savers. The one is as essential as the other." 

"That seems a bit exaggerated !" said I to myself, 
as I laid aside my morning paper and put on my over- 
coat; nevertheless, what I had read remained sub- 
consciously in my mind. 

Ralph Sanderson had asked us to motor out and 
spend the week-end at his country place. It was a 
clear October day, and as we glided through the up- 
town streets everywhere the Stars and Stripes were 
flying and the service-flags, hanging before shops and 
houses, told how each particular family had responded 
to the call of duty. Occasionally we passed a com- 
pany of men in khaki, and once a full regiment, headed 

236 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS " 

by its band and playing "Over there — over there — • 
over there!" It was an inspiriting, a thrilling spec- 
tacle. 

Yet, apart from the flags and the music, I could see 
very little change in the life about us. Fifth Avenue 
was literally choked with motors, many of them with 
two men upon the box. The congestion at Thirty- 
fourth and Forty-second and Fifty-ninth Streets had 
never before approached what it had been since my 
return. And now as we hummed along the boulevards 
we overtook an uninterrupted stream of pleasure-cars, 
all bound for a holiday. We passed a half-completed 
church with workmen literally swarming over its scaf- 
foldings. In front of each of the multitude of apart- 
ment-houses swaggered about stalwart uniformed 
porters. Across the East River several blocks of jerry- 
buildings were being put up. Everywhere sign-boards 
advertised new plays and restaurants, with hideous 
caricatures of young ladies and their young bounder 
friends partaking of broiled live lobster for the purpose 
of luring the public to "groves," "gardens," and 
"palaces," there to dine not wisely but too well. 

Presently we escaped the semirural regions of 
gas-tanks, road-houses, and motor-service depots, and 
achieved the dense rusticality of the estates of the 
Long Island gentry. It was, let us say, somewhere 
in that region of darkest agriculturalism adjacent to 
Roslyn and Glen Cove, where excellent country-build- 

237 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

ing sites can be obtained as low (on bargain-days) 
as three thousand dollars per acre — if one buys whole- 
sale — that we came into view of what at first I took 
to be a mediaeval fortress. 

Two steam-rollers were smoothing the avenue lead- 
ing to the portal in order to facilitate the movement 
of some twenty carts filled with building materials. 
The air rang with the rat-tat-tat of the riveting-ma- 
chine, the shouts of the workmen, and the pound of 
the sledge-hammer. Several hundred carpenters, 
steam-fitters, plumbers, and electricians must have 
been at work inside this modern palace which with 
its wings could not have been less than four hundred 
feet in width, while the grounds were dotted with la- 
borers laying out roads, making flower-beds, and set- 
ting out trees. There was, in fact, a small army at 
work. 

"That's Bing's new place," said Sanderson. "Some 
Waldorf— what?" 

"Who's Bing?" I inquired. 

My friend gazed at me incredulously. 

"Didn't you ever hear of 'The Polygon Pictures 
Company'? — that's Bing. They say he's made a 
little matter of nine million dollars this year, and he's 
keeping it safe for America ; doesn't want to let it get 
out of the country, he says." 

"Bing must be a bird!" I remarked in disgust. 

"He is," readily agreed Sanderson. "There are 
238 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS " 

several other Bing-birds down here — though not of 
the same name." 

Since we were on our way to the extreme eastern 
end of Long Island we stopped for luncheon at one 
of the numerous golf-clubs scattered along the high- 
roads among the building sites. One differentiates 
the estates of the gentry from the golf-clubs by the 
amount of bunkers and bunk. There was a fair-sized 
crowd in the restaurant being served by from fifteen 
to twenty able-bodied waiters; and, over the course, I 
counted from the veranda seventeen other employees 
sedulously engaged in rolling putting-greens, cutting 
grass, replacing divots, and similar productive tasks. 
There were thirty-eight motors — including my friend's 
— parked in the circle in front of the club-house. 

"How many men are there on your pay-roll?" I 
asked. 

"Between fifty and sixty, counting the house- 
servants, and in the garage, stable, and on the links," 
he replied. "We absolutely need every one of them 
to keep the club going." 

Before the end of our day's trip we passed a dozen 
more large country houses and three other new golf 
clubs and links in process of construction. On these 
last the work was obviously being rushed. The war 
had evidently not retarded in the slightest degree 
these private enterprises either collective or individual. 
Of course people must have summer places, hot- 

239 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

houses, and golf-clubs! Farther along the shore my 
host pointed out — I thought with some local pride — 
an immense estate where a large force of men were 
employed in raising fancy shrubs and hothouse plants, 
building rock gardens, and in general turning the 
sandy Long Island landscape into a small modern 
Versailles. 

We arrived at our destination — a comfortable 
colonial mansion over a hundred years old on the out- 
side, but entirely reconstructed so far as the interior 
was concerned — about five o'clock in the afternoon 
and had tea on an enclosed veranda, served by a young 
English butler and a second man in livery. There 
had apparently been no alteration in the size of our 
friend's menage, but later he took occasion to call 
attention to the fact that we were partaking of what 
he was pleased to call a "war dinner," in consequence 
of which he seemed convinced that he was placing 
his native country irreparably in his debt. Simply 
because he had Graham bread instead of white, and 
turkey instead of lamb ! 

Incidentally he had the butler open a bottle of cham- 
pagne, on the ground that to drink it would help the 
4 French ! The war was the sole topic of conversation, 
and Sanderson speedily showed that he was excep- 
tionally well informed upon every political and mili- 
tary phase of it. He recurred constantly to the as- 
sertion that he made a point of observing minutely 

240 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS " 

every governmental regulation or suggestion, and let 
drop the fact that he had contributed largely to the 
Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., and other sorts of war relief, 
and had as well invested twenty-five thousand dollars 
in Liberty Bonds. 

I let him rave on. What use was it to point out to 
my well-meaning but misguided friend that though 
his four courses were literally within the Hooverian 
limit, every one of them violated it in spirit, since in 
each case the most lavish use was made of expensive 
condiments, seasonings, and preserves, requiring large 
quantities of butter and sugar. The fact that these 
were used on fish instead of meat was the merest in- 
cident. He would have retorted that he was obeying 
orders in having a meatless and wheatless day, and 
that that was all there was to it. 

Well, it might have seemed ungracious for a guest 
to discuss the champagne, and on the whole we con- 
cluded to hold our peace. But the sight of the two 
sturdy young Englishmen, solemnly stalking around 
the table passing liqueurs when they ought to have 
been in the trenches, gave me an unpleasant feeling, 
as well as the inclination later to lure one or both of 
them out of the ambush of their pantry and stand them 
up against the wall and find out why they were not 
where they belonged. 

But I find that butlers, second men, and chauffeurs 
"are different," somehow. It is so easy to become 

241 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

dependent upon particular servants. Most women 
would rather have a chop handed round by dear old 
stupid James than a golden pheasant served by a 
maid, however chic. Knee-breeches for some are the 
insignia of respectability, and, of course, one can be 
nothing if not respectable ! 

Last autumn the following appeared in a leading 
New York daily in the column devoted to "society": 

Sept. 12 — Possibility of the drafting of aliens, as proposed by 
the joint resolution in Congress, has caused consternation among 

the big villas, in most of which "English and French men 

servants are employed. On the estates many Breton French are 
employed as gardeners and caretakers. 

Mrs. . . . has an English butler and four other men servants 
who would be subject to the draft. Mrs. . . . has four English 
men servants. Mr, and Mrs. . . ., Mr.s. . . ., and Mrs. . . ., 
Mrs. . . ,, Mr. and Mrs. . . , and others would lose either their 
butlers or helpers in the draft. 

In spite of the calls to service many aliens employed in the 
cottages have remained in this country, tempted by increases 
in wages and other inducements. Besides men who handle the 
affairs of the butlers' pantries others in the cottagers' kitchens 
would be affected by the resolution. The wealthy sojourners 
hold these men to be indispensable in serving dinners and con- 
ducting entertainments. 

Though the rich woman has cheerfully given out of 
her abundance, has bravely watched her sons go ojff to 
the front and her husband intern himself in Washing- 
ton for the period of the war, she has generally flinched 
so far when it came to the lesser sacrifices involving 

242 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS- 



discomfort or even merely inconvenience. She has 
procrastinated in the hope that the war might end or 
some valid excuse turn up which would relieve her of 
the disagreeable necessity of giving up her cherished 
butler and second man. 

Up to this time the patriotism of the wealthy has 
been shown far less in the direction of household 
economy than in their public activities. To be sure, 
dinners are shorter on the whole; there are fewer able- 
bodied butlers and second men about; the dressmakers 
complain that their fashionable customers are wearing 
their last year's gowns, but there are still dinners and 
butlers and dresses very much as before. 

No change is as yet particularly noticeable. It is 
really easier for a rich woman to give ten thousand 
dollars to the Red Cross than to give up her maid; 
far easier to work several hours at the local War Relief 
than to surrender the chauffeur and the motor in 
which she drives there. These thoughts occurred to 
me as my wife and I partook of the war dinner pro- 
vided by our host, a meal that would probably have 
caused a considerable elevation of Mr. Hoover's eye- 
brows. 

The paper that morning had contained a table 
showing the comparative wealth and man power of 
the Central Powers and the Allies. Everybody had 
read it, and since it was so striking, Sanderson had cut 
it out and kept it. 

243 



THE EARTHQUAKE 



UNITED STATES AND ENTENTE ALLIES 




Wealth 


Area 

(Sq MUes) 


Population 


United States, 
Alaska, and 
Philippines 

British Empire — 
Ireland, Canada, 
India, Africa, and 
Australasia 

France and all other 
Allies 


$250,000,000,000 

130,000,000,000 
196,000,000,000 


3,741,828 

12,745,766 
12,268,253 


110,000,000 

437,500,000 
868,800,000 


Total 


$576,000,000,000 


28,755,847 


1,416,300,000 


TEUTONIC ALLIES 


Germany 

German Colonies ... 
Austria-Hungary... , 
Turkey and Bul- 
garia 


$80,000,000,000 
(no estimate) 
25,000,000,000 

3,000,000,000 


208,780 

1,027,820 

260,034 

1,463,448 


65,000,000 

*14,000,000 

49,000,000 

36,000,000 


Total 

Total, U. S and 

Entente Allies . . 
Total, Neutral 

Powers 


$108,000,000,000 

576,000,000,000 

51.900,000,000 


2,960,082 
28,755.847 
11,017,182 


164,000,000 

1,416,300,000 

176,400,000 


Grand Total 


$735,900,000,000 


52,733,121 


1,756,700,000 


COMPARISON 


United States and 

Entente Allies.. . 

Teutonic Allies ... 

Neutral Powers — 


78.3% 

14.7% 

7.0% 


73.5% 

5.6% 

20.9% 


80.7% 

9.3% 

10.0% 



*A D McLaren, of the Manchester Daily Guardian, says {Atlanlic 
Monthly, Dec , 1917) that there was in 1913 a total colonial population 
of Germans of 24,389, including oflBcers and soldiers in garrisons. 

244 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS " 

"The boches haven't a chance!" confidently pro- 
claimed our host after dinner on the strength of the 
foregoing figures. "Not a chance! It's all over but 
the shouting! The Allies have five times as much 
money and eight times as many men." 

Unfortunately, the average New York bond-broker 
is not only statistically sophisticated but sceptical as 
well. 

"My dear Sanderson," I returned, "I don't wish 
to discourage you, but those figures are highly mis- 
leading. A hundred thousand men on the firing-line 
are worth a hundred million in Siam, Bechuanaland, 
and Hindu Kush. You've got to have your men where 
they'll be some good to you. So you can just elimi- 
nate all the Hottentots and Esquimaux that are fig- 
ured in on the Entente side of the balance-sheet. And 
what good do Russia's one hundred and eighty mil- 
lions do us? Or Japan's seventy-two millions, for 
that matter? On the other hand, the Teutonic allies 
draw on populations exclusively within their own 
frontier battle-line. No; you can't dope out the 
winner on any such general basis as that, interesting 
as the figures may be." 

Sanderson seemed unconvinced. 

"Well, anyhow," he argued, "money counts! 
Germany can't win if she's only got one hundred and 
eight billion dollars as against five hundred and 
seventy-six billion on the side of the Allies. Why, 

245 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

you told me only a day or so ago that the United 
States could pay the interest on a hundred-billion-dol- 
lar Liberty Loan at four per cent if we simply gave up 
— what was it ? — chewing-gum, alcohol, tobacco, 
snuff, moving pictures, soda-water, and candy ! " 

"That's quite right," I acquiesced, complimented 
at his recollection. "We could pay the interest." 

"Then we can go on fighting forever!" he an- 
nounced. "What's the paltry five billion of the last 
Liberty Loan compared with what the United States 
could raise by taxation or voluntary subscription if it 
really set out to do it?" 

"Well," I reminded him, "we shall have a good 
chance to find out, for before June 30, 1918, the United 
States wiU have assumed the burden of raising twenty- 
one billions of dollars as its first year's appropriation 
toward winning the war. That, my dear sir, is more 
than the value of all the railroad bonds and stocks in 
the entire country. It is, as Mr. Vanderlip recently 
pointed out, only five billion less than the total ex- 
penditures of this government from the year 1791 to 
January 1, 1917, a period of one hundred and twenty- 
sLx years." 

My wife, who was sitting with us, raised her hands 
in dismay. 

"I hear what you say, John," she declared. "But 
I don't know what it means. I can't take it in. I 
wonder if any man can!" 

246 



"OF SHOES-OF SHIPS " 

"There is only one who pretends to do so," I re- 
plied. "And — maybe he's mistaken!" 

"All the same," insisted Sanderson, as we climbed 
up the stairs, bedward, " take it from me we'll find the 
money will be there when the time comes ! Do you 
realize that if everybody in the United States gave 
only ten cents a week to the government it would 
amount to five hundred and seventy-two million dol- 
lars a year? We're the richest nation on earth, and 
our money is going to win the war ! " 

" It would if we could eat bank-notes or shoot dol- 
lars at the Germans!" I retorted as a final volley. 

"What rot!" he yawned. "Well! Good night! 
See you in the morning ! What do you want for break- 
fast — ham or bacon?" 

• ••••••• 

A telegram from Morris in Washington to the ef- 
fect that he would be at the New York office on Mon- 
day morning brought us back to the city before the 
expected conclusion of our visit. But during the time 
we had spent at Sanderson's country place nothing 
had occurred to alter our impression that our host 
actually believed that he was doing his full duty to his 
country and living up to the highest standards of pa- 
triotism, to say nothing of those of the Food Adminis- 
tration pledge-card that hung in the coat-room win- 
dow — so long as he ate hot corn muSins for Sunday 
luncheon. 

247 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

I fear there is a certain elasticity about Mr. Hoo- 
ver's requirements readily availed of by the self- 
indulgent. We cannot afford to be indefinite if we 
are to win this war. There is, too, a very general 
misconception to the effect that by saving food in ac- 
cordance with the wishes of the administrator we shall 
also save money. Of course this is an utterly mis- 
taken idea. Though it may be true that if one is pa- 
triotic enough to save white flour, meat, and bacon in 
accordance with Mr. Hoover's request he may, as a 
result, possibly become so thrifty that he will econ- 
omize all along the line, and so incidentally save 
money, the fact remains that the purpose of the pledge- 
card is simply to induce people, so far as possible, to 
go without those staples of food of which there is a 
shortage in order that we may furnish them in the 
needed quantities to our Allies and our own men 
abroad. In point of fact, I have found it just a shade 
more expensive to be a perfect Hooverite than not to 
be one. The only motive for Hooverism as such is 
patriotism, pure and simple. 

On my arrival at the office on Monday morning I 
found my two partners already there. I had not seen 
Morris since my departure for the Orient in Decem- 
ber, 1916, and I was surprised at the change in him. 
He had grown quite gray and the lines on his face and 
the weariness in his eyes indicated only too plainly 

248 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS- 



the strain he had been under during all the hot sum- 
mer months when, instead of sitting on his veranda at 
Bar Harbor, he had toiled at the Treasury Depart- 
ment, with the thermometer hovering around a hun- 
dred degrees. There was, too, a gravity about his 
demeanor that was new. 

He quite agreed with us, he said, about our busi- 
ness. There was nothing in it at the present juncture 
from any point of view. Besides, the government 
needed clerks and stenographers, and by discharging 
ours we should be releasing labor. Then he turned to 
me and asked what I was going to do. I had been 
asking myself that question for some time. My son 
Jack was already on the other side; my wife was 
working day and night at War Relief, and my daughter 
was studying in a business college eight hours a day. 
I was the only person in my family who wasn't doing 
anything; which was embarrassing, since I had done a 
good deal of talking on the subject of patriotic duty. 

What I really wanted to do was to get as near the 
front as I could — some sort of a military job — but my 
hopes had been recently shattered when the medical 
examiner of one of the big life-insurance companies 
had turned down my application for a policy on the 
ground that I had a bad heart. I felt like a spring 
chicken, but that doctor had cooked the chicken, so 
far as active service was concerned. 

Of course I could get busy on a Liberty Loan cam- 
249 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

paign or a Red Cross drive, but I wanted to do some- 
thing more than merely solicit subscriptions. I had 
volunteered my services to the Food Administration, 
but its officials had not as yet seen fit to avail them- 
selves of my offer. I had written to the War Depart- 
ment, the State Department, and the Navy Depart- 
ment without result. 

My pride had suffered a distinct shock and my self- 
esteem had become very much deflated since finding 
myself so little appreciated. I had always rather 
fancied myself a really distinguished sort of fellow — 
for a bond-broker. Now it appeared, however dis- 
tinguished I might be, I wasn't wanted — at present, 
of course ! 

"Yes, John! What are you going to do?" he re- 
peated. "Isn't it time you started on something?" 

"That is the question," I replied. "I want to do 
the work that I am best fitted for; where it will do 
the most good. But I can't seem to find any job. 
Middle-aged men are a drug on the market. Of course 
I can roll bandages or solicit contributions; but I'd 
like to get nearer the front." 

To my astonishment my ordinarily pacific partner 
scowled and pounded a fist into the palm of his other 
hand. 

"Nearer the front!" he cried impatiently. "Nearer 
the front ! Anybody who can make people understand 
that it isn't getting men for the trenches that's our 
difficulty, but how to feed and arm them, and to keep 

250 



*'0F SHOES— OF SHIPS " 

them fed and armed — that man is going to do more 
for this country than any ten thousand chaps in 
khaki who account for ten times as many Germans. 
In the first place, of course, we were faced with the 
problem of how to raise and train our armies. We 
solved that pretty well. Our next task was to raise 
money. We've done better than we expected. There's 
been an encouraging response. The future looks 
bright enough in that respect. But what people don't 
understand yet is that furnishing the government with 
money — even twenty billions of dollars — is only half, 
if it's even that, of what we've got to do." 

"I don't fully understand," I interrupted. "If the 
government is given the money to spend, why can't it 
go out and buy what it wants and hire what men it 
needs ? " 

"Because," answered Morris, "the mere fact that 
we turned over to the government five billion dollars 
in the last Liberty Loan won't help us at all unless the 
government, in its turn, can exchange the money for 
the things we want — food, uniforms, guns, labor. 
The success of the loan merely means that five billion 
dollars will be credited to the government, and that 
the bank balances of the bond buyers will be debited 
by a similar amount. Raising money, by itself, won't 
raise a single potato more than we had before. 

" Of course it's an elementary proposition, but people 
don't seem to get it through their heads. They think 
in terms of money when they ought to think in 

251 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

terms of goods and labor. The American public has 
an idea that you can solve any problem by passing 
legislation and appropriating money. We vote a 
billion dollars for aeroplanes and destroyers, and then 
sit back comfortably with the idea that they're al- 
ready bombing Berlin and sinking submarines. It's a 
delusion of grandeur. Congress can vote money until 
it's black in the face and yet accomplish nothing, un- 
less the people supply what's really needed — the ma- 
terials and the men. 

"Now, where are they coming from? Remember 
that our mills and our mines are producing no more 
than heretofore and that two million men out of our 
thirteen million workers have been drafted. Let us 
assume that we, as a nation, have been obliged to pro- 
duce for our efficient support a quantity of essentials we 
shall call x. Well, the government comes along and 
appropriates twenty billion dollars — practically all of 
which is to be spent in this country — to carry on the 
war. If, after it is raised, all the money is to be used for 
the purposes for which it was voted, we shall have to 
produce this year not only the quantity x, which we 
absolutely needed before, but also twenty billion more 
in goods and labor. Where is it coming from ? " 

"Preposterous!" I exclaimed. The proposition 
was simplicity itself, but it seemed utterly impossible 
of accomplishment. " It can't be done ! " 

"I don't know whether it can or not," replied 
Morris. "There are so many unknown factors in- 

252 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS " 

volved. There is the factor of accumulated surplus 
wealth — the factor of yearly saving in the past — for, 
of course, as a people we have always saved a pro- 
portion of what we have produced, only it isn't in a 
form that can help us much — houses, railroads, and 
so on. There is the great unknown factor of how far 
our ten million physically able women can and will 
take the place of men and how far the men who have 
hitherto been regarded as too old can be made useful. 

"There is going to be a tremendous rejuvenation of 
the middle-aged. The age limit on railroads, for in- 
stance, will probably be pushed up five years. Old 
and decrepit men will be utilized for the ornamental 
sinecures, such as doorkeeping. 

"Then there is the practically unknown factor of how 
much X really is and how much of our total annual 
production has been for non-essentials. It may be 
much larger than we think. And, finally, there is the 
unknown factor of how much we, as a people, can save 
over and above what we've saved before. 

"Well, to make a long story short, it's a tremendous, 
staggering question; and the more people I talk to 
about it and the more I study it the less I am able to 
come to any conclusion as to what the task confront- 
ing us actually amounts to in billions. Congress has 
appropriated twenty billions of dollars for war pur- 
poses. Of this about five billion will go for soldiers' 
pay and similar objects, not requiring any production 
to meet them; but the balance of fifteen billion is to 

253 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

be spent in the purchase and manufacture of war 
materials and in other ways requiring labor and pro- 
duction. Now, assume that the annual pre-war pro- 
duction of the United States was twenty-five billion, 
this will mean an added production of fifteen billion, 
or a total of forty billion, as against our previous 
twenty-five. How are we going to supply the mate- 
rials and labor to meet this new and unprecedented 
demand? Well, first by extending and speeding up 
producing. We ought to be able to increase our an- 
nual production of goods and labor from twenty-five 
to thirty billion. That is only an increase of twenty 
per cent. But that leaves a deficit of ten billion! 
Where is it coming from? The only answer is that 
it must be saved ! We must save forty per cent of the 
amount of our annual pre-war production of twenty- 
five billion — that is, we must deny ourselves and re- 
lease to the government goods and labor amounting 
to about ten billions of dollars ! Yet it is a sum larger 
than the human mind can comprehend." * 

* Estimated annual pre-war production of United 

States in materials and labor $25,000,000,000 

Appropriations during first year of war, to be 

expended on materials and labor 15,000,000,000 

Total materials and labor necessary to meet (a) 
ordinary requirements and (6) first-year ap- 
propriations (as above) $40,000,000,000 

Increased production in materials and labor — 30,000,000,000 

Balance of materials and labor it is necessary to 
save if we are to carry out our war programme $10,000,000,000 

254 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS " 

"That is the basis of Mr. Vanderlip's thrift cam- 
paign and his saving certificates, isn't it?" asked 
Lord. "The theory is that if we lend the money to 
the government we shall have just so much less left 
to spend on ourselves, and so will have to go without. 
As you say, the banking transaction doesn't affect the 
economic situation. There isn't any more flour or 
labor now than there was before the Liberty Loan was 
floated. The important thing is going without the 
flour and labor — more important even than lending to 
the government the money we save by going without." 

" That's it, exactly ! " declared Morris. " It isn't the 
money that the government needs so much as the 
things — things and the labor to make 'em; and we can 
get those things and that labor by inducing idlers to 
work, accelerating or increasing production, or by sav- 
ing. Now when all is said and done, practically the 
only way to enable the government to get the goods and 
the labor it needs is by going without them ourselves. 
As Blackett says: 'Every cent of private expenditure 
that is not really necessary for health and efficiency 
involves a diminution of the goods and services avail- 
able for winning the war. Extravagance and waste 
are treason.' 

"One thing is certain. The government may have 
all the money in the world at its disposal, but unless 
those who control the goods and labor will release 
them to the government, our boys over in France will 

255 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

lack even the necessaries of life. We have got to cut 
off our production of everything the government 
does not need and cut down our consumption of every- 
thing else, in order to furnish the things the govern- 
ment must have to carry on and win the war. 

"Now, the very first requirement is ships; ships 
to get our armies over to France; ships to keep them 
supplied with food and ammunition. We've got the 
soldiers, but there aren't enough ships to carry them 
over. The neck is too small for the bottle. Why? 
Because private enterprises engaged in comparatively 
unimportant work are taking the men away from the 
shipyards by offering higher wages than the latter can 
afford. With the German submarines sinking ship- 
ping at the rate of six million tons a year Congress 
has authorized the construction of five million tons. 
Added to the tonnage in the yards, which we have 
already requisitioned, this makes a total of 10,623,000 
of deadweight tonnage. To get these ships afloat we 
need five hundred thousand mechanics. We have 
less than two hundred thousand; and, at that, the 
various yards are competing with one another for 
their services. Every ship once in the water will 
need men and ofBcers — one hundred thousand for 
every thousand ships. 

"It is the most gigantic task — the most vital task 
— in the history of the war. To fail in its accomplish- 
ment means defeat. Yet the yards are, for the most 

256 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS- 



part, working only one shift of men a day when they 
ought to be running twenty-four hours out of the 
twenty-four, Sundays and holidays included. This 
in spite of the fact that riveters are getting as high 
as one hundred and seventy-two dollars per week! 
Not far from Philadelphia there's a big shipyard that 
ought to be running night and day. It can only get 
sixty per cent of the labor it needs. Its total force 
is a little over five thousand men. Near it is a phono- 
graph-factory employing eight thousand men. The 
shipyards could utilize thousands of those phonograph 
workers but can't get them. Yet the newspapers hesi- 
tate about going after the talking-machine fellows 
because they are such big advertisers. 

"It's the same situation everywhere," he con- 
tinued. "People are simply asleep — that's all! The 
government needs five thousand stenographers to-day 
in Washington and seven thousand firemen. When I 
left there on Friday it had no prospect of getting them. 
It needs five hundred chauffeurs, on the jump, to drive 
supply-trucks — and it has to wait; and yet there are 
ninety-two thousand chauffeurs in the metropolitan 
district of New York alone ! 

"Night and day — day and night," went on Morris 
heatedly, "the guns are roaring over on the western 
front, hurling an unceasing torrent of shells into the 
German lines. Nine million dollars' worth of shells 
cross the trenches every day. The war has become a 

257 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

contest of workshops. But the shops lack workers, 
while rich people roll round in their motors — some of 
them with two men on the box ! " 

"Really, it's almost criminal!" I cried. 

"When you think that in the early days of the war 
whole brigades were wiped out of existence for lack 
of artillery support, due to a failure of ammunition, 
you realize that it is criminal ! The government could 
get forty-five regiments of mechanics out of New York's 
chauffeur class alone. If we gave up our cars the fac- 
tories which would otherwise be making the new mod- 
els for next year could either release their men for the 
shipyards or could be converted themselves into mu- 
nition works. The materials, steel, iron, rubber, nickel, 
copper, leather, woollen, etc., would be available for 
the needs of the army. The petrol would be used be- 
hind the lines at the front." 

"In England," said Lord, "the National War Sav- 
ings Committee had placed at its disposal an immense 
amount of poster space, and it plastered it with signs, 
among others: 'Don't ride a motor-car for pleasure.* 
Naturally, timid motorists were a bit nervous lest 
they might be attacked on the highroads by the in- 
dignant proletariat. It wasn't a bad idea." 

Morris laughed grimly, 

"You wait! It won't be a question of posters. 
If we can't get men to build the ships that are going 
to win this war, we'll take the men off the front seats 

258 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS " 

of the pleasure-cars — conscript 'em. We'll have to or 
our boys will just be gun fodder ! As Mr. Vanderlip 
says: 

" 'The only way to increase the number of men and 
shells and supplies available at the front to win the 
war is to reduce the competition of private individuals 
for the goods and services that the belligerent govern- 
ments require for war needs. This can be done only 
by increasing production of the things which are nec- 
essary and reducing the consumption of everything 
else.* " 

"That is well put," I exclaimed. "It makes clear 
Lloyd George's statement: 'Extravagance costs blood 
— the blood of heroes.' " 

But Morris did not heed the interruption. 

"I know of a very large carpet-factory near here 
which closed down voluntarily and changed over its 
spindles — at a comparatively trifling cost — so that it 
now manufactures army duck for tents, wagon-covers, 
and so on. If the o\\Tiers hadn't done so of their own 
accord they ought to have been compelled to do so 
by the action of the public in refusing to buy carpets. 

"But no matter how much the public is willing to 
do its part we've still got to reckon with the laborer. 
Wages have been doubled in many businesses, but re- 
ports come in from nearly all the great industries, 
mines, and shipyards telling of men who refuse to 
work more than half-time — content, under the im- 

259 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

proved conditions, to make as much in five hours as 
they formerly did in ten. Meantime the ship-building 
programme lags, coal production is insufficient, and 
industry is generally undermanned in spite of the in- 
crease in wages. Sooner or later labor conscription 
in some form is sure to result; but there will be a 
fierce political struggle before it is secured." 

"That would be pretty drastic !" hazarded Lord. 

Morris turned on him sharply. 

"Suppose you needed a chauffeur for your motor, 
you wouldn't try to induce a fellow driving an am- 
bulance in France to take your job, would you? Or 
if you needed a mechanic in your business you wouldn't 
try and tease a chap out of a factory where he was 
turning shells for the Allies ! Well, it's the same thing 
if you keep the chauffeur or keep the mechanic." 

"Right!" agreed Lord. 

"There's an awful lot of rot talked about 'business 
as usual ' ! There won't he any business if we lose 
this war! We've got to have ships — ships — SHIPS! 
To quote Vanderlip again : ' The person who buys an 
unnecessary thing, however small its cost and however 
well able he is to pay for it, is not helping the govern- 
ment by going on with "business as usual," but is 
upon the contrary competing with the government 
for goods and services. The article he purchases may 
be of a character altogether different from the things 
the government requires, but labor must be used in 

260 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS- 



producing it, whatever it is; and labor that is used to 
produce the needless thing is labor taken away from 
the great task of producing necessary goods.* I've 
got here a compilation by the Federal Bureau of 
Labor statistics showing the number of workers on 
the pay-rolls at the end of August, 1917, as compared 
with August, 1916, a year ago. They show a reduc- 
tion in all the industries examined except ready-made 
clothing and automobile manufacturing. 

"The rich have been among the first to give them- 
selves and their sons to the country. Now it is up to 
them to set the example of sacrificing their comfort 
and convenience to win the war. The poor man can 
hardly be expected to give up his little luxuries or cut 
down his pleasures if he sees the rich woman buying 
furs and jewelry, and motoring around with a footman 
■ beside the driver on the box of her limousine. She's 
got to walk ! And it's up to you, John, to make her !" 

His face cleared and a smile broke over it. 

" I've got your job cut out for you, old man ! You 
must be the prophet of this new doctrine — that the 
people at home must make sacrifices to save the lives 
of the boys in the trenches; that money-savers are life- 
savers. You must educate the people to the fact 
that just as the soldiers have got to be drilled and dis- 
ciplined, so the people of the United States have got 
to be drilled and disciplined into a great universal 
army of savers!" 

261 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

"It's a great cause!" 

"The greatest in the history of the nation !" 

"I'll do what I can!" I agreed heartily. "I can 
see already how easy it would be to release an enor- 
mous amount of materials and labor by a slight in- 
dividual sacrifice." * 

"One of the easiest ways would be for every family 
to reduce the number of the servants employed in its 

* The report of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue indicates 
that the people of the United States spent, during the fiscal year 
ending June 30, 1917, upon 

Whiskey $576,328,361 

Beer 1,518,237,725 

Cigars 460,845,055 

Cigarettes 183,175,150 

Tobacco (smoking and chewing) 289,746,087 

Snuff 22,995,538 

This is a total of $3,051,327,916 

This shows the "economic slack'' that could be taken up if 
necessary. But it doesn't stop there, by any means. If the 
men did not smoke, chew, and drink, their wives and children 
would still abandon themselves to the delights of chewing-gum, 
soda-water, candy, and the movies. A recognized authority puts 
these hardly vital expenditures at the following figures for the 
nation : 

Chewing-gum $50,000,000 

Candy 300,000,000 

Soda-water 200,000,000 

Moving pictures 450,000,000 

Total 11,000,000,000 

Add for tobacco and hquor (as above) 3,000,000,000 

Total $4,000,000,000 

Four billion dollars would be the interest on a Liberty Loan of 
one hundred hillion dollars. We expect to put the Kaiser where 
he belongs for considerably less than that. We do not need to 
worry about mere money. 

262 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS " 

household," answered Morris. "There are sixty 
thousand servant-girls in this city alone. Look at the 
hundreds of able-bodied men employed to walk up 
and down in livery in front of apartment-houses, thea- 
tres, and stores, the thousands of scene-shifters, elec- 
tricians, ticket-sellers, painters, ushers, and doormen 
at the theatres. And I can't help reverting to those 
ninety-two thousand chauffeurs ! But there isn't any 
use trying to particularize. There should be no lux- 
uries bought or sold. We should cherish our coal and 
wood as if they were precious metals. Indeed, the 
fuel administrator and the priority board are con- 
sidering the curtailment of the use of coal and coke in 
the production of eleven important commodities, 
namely, pleasure vehicles, brewery products, candy, 
toys, table glassware, pottery, athletic goods, jewelry, 
silverware, window-glass, electric signs, and electric- 
sign lighting. Whoever saves, helps. Every time we 
spend anything it means that somebody has to work 
for us. Whenever you refrain from travelling you 
save the coal used for producing the motive power of 
either steam or electric roads, and gasolene for the 
buses and taxis. If people walked more instead of 
riding, fewer public conveyances would have to be 
run, and the labor of those who run them could be 
diverted to more useful employment. 

"The British committee have put it in a nutshell 
when they say: *To save money is to release labor, 

263 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

goods, and services for other purposes. If we lend 
the money we save to the nation, we lend to the na- 
tion the power to command the labor, goods, and 
services that we have released.' You can't state it 
any better. We must all save on everything ! As 
soon as we have enough of anything — that is, as soon 
as the point of efficiency has been reached — we should 
save. The chief things to do without are those that 
do not promote efficiency — the non-essentials. Pianos, 
for instance — jewelry, for which, by the way, we spend 
two hundred million dollars every year in the United 
States — furniture, house decorations, pictures, hang- 
ings — the list is legion ! 

"The men who have made watches and clocks must 
be put at making time-fuses. Those who machined 
the cylinders for automobile-engines must turn out 
shells and guns. The iron-workers who have been 
employed in the construction of skyscrapers must be- 
come ship-builders. The spinners and weavers who 
made expensive dress-fabrics must manufacture khaki 
and cotton duck. The thousands and hundreds of 
thousands of men who have hitherto been engaged 
in making and distributing such non-essentials as per- 
fumery, sporting-goods, furniture, expensive china, 
silks, laces, pictures (both stationary and moving), 
and the scores of other things that are paid for but 
do not contribute to our health or efficiency must be 
freed to work and fight for the nation." 

264 



^OF SHOES— OF SHIPS- 



" There's one thing on which the women can come 
in strong," interjected Lord, "and that's clothes. 
They should only allow themselves one evening dress. 
And by universal consent there should be no new 
styles until the war is over." 

"In England," assented Morris, "they put up 
placards all over London, reading: 

'Bad Form in Dress! 

to dress extravagantly in wartime is 
NOT ONLY Unpatriotic — it is 

BAD FORM!' 

That got 'em ! Even the women who were selfish 
slackers made themselves look as dowdy as possible. 

"There isn't any beginning or end to it. There's 
a real shortage in sugar, for instance, but there wouldn't 
be if it were not for the preposterous amount which 
we Americans eat. The Department of Commerce 
estimates that before the war the per-capita con- 
sumption of sugar was sixteen pounds in Germany, 
twenty-eight in France, thirty in Great Britain, and 
about fourteen, I think, in Italy. Now, our per-capita 
consumption of sugar in 1880 was thirty-nine and one- 
half pounds, and it has increased to such an extent that 
it is to-day eighty-one pounds for every man, ivoman, and 
child in the United States. We could cut our demand 
in half, and then be using more than England did 
before the war. Then there's leather " 

Lord laughed. 

265 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

" 'The time has come,' the Walrus said, 
'To talk of many things; 
Of shoes — of ships — of seaUng-wax — 
Of cabbages — and kings 1' " 

he quoted. 

"If we look out for the shoes and the ships, the 
kings will be taken care of in due course," smiled 
Morris. "But there's one final factor that you will 
have to deal with, John. You will find that all the 
manufacturers of luxuries and unnecessaries — ^and 
the unessentials far outnumber the luxuries — will 
agree with you up to a certain point, will often, in 
fact — like the automobile-manufacturers — go more 
than half way in their co-operation, but — nobody 
wants to be put out of business. The jewellers, for 
instance, have pretty consistently declined to take 
orders for things made of platinmn in view of the 
government's need of it. But they want to go on 
making jewelry ! Now, jewelry won't help win the 
war. On the other hand, those jewellers — the work- 
men I mean, of course — could be utilized by the gov- 
ernment in making the more delicate parts of 
aeroplanes. Every dressmaker, perfumer, graphophone 
manufacturer, jeweller, every maker of things not ab- 
solutely essential to the efficiency and health of the 
people — or at any rate to the extent that his out- 
put is not needed for national efficiency — should be 
obliged by the fact that the people deny themselves 

266 



'OF SHOES— OF SHIPS- 



his particular luxury to reduce the number of his em-' 
ployees. These will gradually find other employment. 
The lace-maker, fitter, gem-cutter, turner will shift 
about into other sorts of work; everybody will 'move 
along one' until at the end of the line there will be 
one more riveter in the shipyard. We must not wait 
for the men themselves to do it. It wouldn't be 
human nature. They wouldn't know how, or they'd 
think they didn't. It must be accomplished by the 
law of supply and demand — and we control the de- 
mand. Go to it, John, old boy! Your work is cut 
out for you!" 

"Yes," I assented, "my work is cut out for me! 
But what shall I say if one of these jewellers or per- 
fumers asks me how he is going to live ? " 

Morris's face grew stern. 

"Plenty of men are going into the trenches to 
die," he thundered. "The war must be fought here 
as well as at the front. One man in the shipyards to- 
day is worth three in the trenches !" * 

* "We are at war; and for some reason the business interests 
have not yet chosen to realize it. Nine-tenths of the business 
men of the country are either preaching 'business as usual' or 
are urging the people to spend freely and extravagantly, because 
they think the circulation of money will win the war. The chief 
reason for the terrible railroad congestion has been the effort to 
carry on the normal traffic of peace, which before the war began 
was overtaxing the railroad facilities, and to add to it the tre- 
mendous new war traffic without increasing the facihties. And 
it could not and cannot be done. 

"When Germany entered the war the whole industrial system 
of the empire was changed. Even the railroad system was com- 

267 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

Yet in the face of the present exigency people con- 
tinue to waste fuel and labor for their mere pleasure. 
Only this morning I received this letter: 

Burlington, N. C, Dec. 13, 1917. 

This morning a party of hunters from the North reached 
Greensboro, N. C, too late to catch the morning train going 
east, due to arrive here about nine o'clock. As no other train 
is operated until the afternoon, which reaches here at 5 p. M., a 
special train was chartered consisting of one large locomotive 
and two cars. 

This appears to me a most outrageous misuse of railroad 
equipment and fuel. All of the cotton-mills in this vicinity 
have had coal confiscated from them in wholesale quantities 
"for the operation of Government troop-trains, etc.," our mill 
having lost in this manner about thirty car-loads, or sufficient 
to run us for over three months. 

It is absolutely useless to protest, as the Southern Railway 
has the legal right to seize this coal, but when they use a portion 

pletely reorganized, a fact that few people seem to know. The 
dozens of small railway systems existing in and operated by the 
separate German states were taken over by the imperial govern- 
ment, and welded together into a single great unified system under 
the control of a single administrative authority. Passenger traf- 
fic was cut ruthlessly, and the production of the unnecessary and 
the less necessary articles of ordinary consumption was immedi- 
ately restricted, or stopped altogether. There has scarcely been 
a piece of furniture made in Germany since the war began. 
England tried 'business as usual,' but soon discovered the mistake. 

"What have we done? Our only effort to curb the 'business- 
as-usual' doctrine has been confined to the soHtary preaching of 
a few far-seeing and thoughtful men such as Frank Vanderlip. 
They have urged voluntary economy as a means of cutting down 
the production of less essential articles. 

"How have the newspapers treated the campaign for voluntary 
economy? There is not a newspaper in New York which has, 
on its editorial pages, whole-heartedly and earnestly, day after 
day, supported this movement. The Hearst papers, at the rate 
of about one huge editorial a week, have even encouraged ex- 

268 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS " 

of it to cater to the luxurious demand of wealthy sportsmen in a 
community which is about to freeze to death it is enough to turn 
the people into raving Bolsheviki. Will you not please give 
this fact publicity, withholding, of com'se, the name of your in- 
formant but mentioning the railroad and the points of origin 
and destination of the special. 

I think this gives a fine opportunity for some constructive 
criticism of the so-called Fuel Administration. 

As I walked up-town that afternoon, pondering on 
the importance of the task in which I was to take a 
part, I thought of the privations undergone for the 
sake of victory during the Civil War, of which I had 
often heard my father speak. 

"My wife and I," said Asa Gray in 1862, "have 
scraped up five hundred and fifty dollars, all we can 
scrape, and lent it to the United States." 

Lowell wrote in a private letter: "I had a little 

travagance and foolish expenditure, and they have endeavored 
to prejudice the pubhc against Mr. VanderUp's teaching by 
asserting that his doctrine of economy, if followed out, would 
increase the earnings of the banks. An advertisement appearing 
in the Philadelphia Public Ledger stated that the campaign to 
encourage economy was a part of the German propaganda in 
this country ! The advertiser was a jeweler. 

'"Business as usual' is having its result in choked terminals, 
car shortages, and coal famines. The public press, which has 
openly or tacitly supported this infamous and injurious doctrine, 
is as much responsible for Garfield's order as any other agency. 

"Until we can go directly to the cause of all our troubles, the 
stupid and senseless production of goods which can be dispensed 
with during the war, we shall never be able to end railroad con- 
gestion, and we shall not be able to do our proper share in the 
war. Until the editors of a few newspapers realize this fact and 
begin to say so, the present extravagance and hopeless waste 
and confusion will go on." — T. W. Van Metre in The New Re- 
picblic, Feb. 2, 1918. 

269 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

Italian bluster of brushwood-fire yesterday morning; 
but the times are too hard with me to allow of such 
an extravagance except on the brink of gelation." 

"The first of January," wrote Emerson in 1862, 
"has found me in quite as poor a plight as the rest of 
the Americans. Not a penny from my books since 
last June, which usually yield five or six hundred a 
year; no dividends from the banks or from Lidia's 
Plymouth property. Then almost all income from 
lectures has quite ceased; so that your letter found me 
in a study how to pay three or four hundred dollars 
with fifty. ... I have been trying to sell a wood-lot 
at or near its appraisal, which would give me something 
more than three hundred, but the purchaser does not 
appear. Meantime we are trying to be as unconsum- 
ing as candles under an extinguisher; and 'tis fright- 
ful to think how many rivals we have in distress and 
in economy. But far better that this grinding should 
go on bad and worse than we be driven by any impa- 
tience into a hasty peace, or any peace restoring the old 
rottenness." 

Later that evening, happening to pass a famous 
Broadway hotel, I entered the foyer to observe what 
change, if any, the war had brought about there. 
It was crowded with men and women in evening dress 
coming to supper after the theatre. Down in the 
grill-room the dancing-floor was packed with couples 
who were turkey and fox trotting to the crash of a 

270 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS " 

jazz band; while those who could not find room to 
dance sat laughing, smoking, and drinking as if 
thousands of their fellow human beings were not at 
that very moment dying upon the blood-drenched 
battle-fields of France, Belgium, and Venetia. 

Suddenly the lights were turned off and a smirking 
human doll, with a painted face and curls hanging 
down her bare back, began to dance suggestively be- 
neath a spotlight, beckoning and posturing before 
the men at the tables. Disgusted, I ascended to the 
foyer and found myself face to face with the manager. 

"Hello, Mr. Stanton!" he cried. "Been down for 
a little turn?" 

"Yes," I answered savagely, "and I got one — but 
not the kind you mean." 

"Sh!" he protested. "Look here; we're doing 
everything humanly possible to save! It's almost a 
joke what we give our patrons. We've 'saved every- 
thing out of the pig except the squeal.' I guess that 
Mr. Hoover will agree that no body of men has re- 
sponded so nobly to his appeal for food conservation 
as the hotel men !" 

I laughed a hollow laugh. 

"I counted forty waiters serving ices and cham- 
pagne," I remarked shortly. "Are you aware that 
there's such a shortage of wire that we may not be 
able to keep our armies properly supplied for the 
building of entanglements ? Some day the government 

271 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

may step in here and stop your elevators in order to 
conserve the wire in the lifting cables! How would 
you like that?" 

He shrugged his shoulders. 

"Well," he answered, "have your joke I But you 
don't want us to close up, do you?" 

I sat for a long time before the fire after I got home 
before going to bed, thinking of what I had heard 
and seen that day. I recalled how a well-known Eng- 
lishman had said that his comitrymen had made war 
for a year in their frock coats, and then suddenly had 
had to get down to their shirt-sleeves. 

After I had retired I was unable to sleep. For 
hours I tossed from side to side, and then at last I 
must have begun to dream, for I found myself upon 
the front, somewhere near the Woevre, looking for 
Jack. Crouched in the darkness of a narrow passage 
between two irregular walls of clay, I struggled forward 
to find my son. 

"Bend lower!" muttered the vague shadow crawl- 
ing beside me. Just ahead, in mid-air, the German 
star shells were breaking one after another in quick 
succession, casting momentarily a ghastly light on 
the inferno beyond the parapets. The dull pain in my 
ears became agony whenever one of the boche projec- 
tiles burst with a shattering roar in the black waste 
behind us. The earth rocked with the thunder of the 
guns, and underneath the higher rattle of the mi- 

272 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS " 

trailleuses, the sharp detonations of the shrapnel, and 
the bark of the field-pieces there was a constant 
rumbling diapason in which all sounds merged 
into a deep bellow like that of a hungry war mon- 
ster. 

I stumbled on through the communicating trench, 
following my guide by the reflection of the German 
flares and ever and again stepping upon human hands 
and feet, some of which were withdrawn, while others 
offered no resistance save that of inanimate bone and 
flesh. Once I slipped in bloody mire and fell flat upon 
something soft. My companion shrugged his shoul- 
ders as I struggled to my feet. 

"They haven't given us any flash-lights for months ! " 
he muttered. "Put your hand on my back." 

"Where is your coat?" I asked, for it was snowing 
and the icy mud was above our ankles. 

"We have no coats!" he answered mockingly. 

We crept on, it seemed by inches, until we debouched 
into the firing trench, under the parapet of which lay 
what seemed to be a row of human forms in agony. 

"Where are your doctors? Your ambulances?" 
I demanded. 

He laughed heartlessly. 

"We have no ambulances — and no chauffeurs." 

I pressed my hands to my temples, for I seemed to 
be going mad. 

" Where is my son ? " I shrieked. 
273 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

A star shell burst over our heads and he pointed 
to a hatless figure in tattered khaki on the firing shelf. 

"There!" he replied. 

"Jack!" I called in terror. "Jack, come down!" 

He turned and looked at me strangely — without 
recognition. He was white, haggard, tortured, utterly- 
different from the day when I bade him good-by. I 
fell on my knees in the mud and stretched implor- 
ing arms upward. 

"It's I — your father ! Don't you know me. Jack?" 
I cried in a voice I could not recognize as mine. 

"We have no fathers!" he retorted bitterly. "And 
no mothers ! We have nobody !" 

The light faded away and the night clapped down 
again upon the trench and its occupants. Weird shapes 
stumbled past, but my own legs seemed fastened im- 
movably in the mud. I tried to shout but could not. 
Then a few feet beyond where I stood, I saw by the 
light of a flare a gap in the parapet where some huge 
shell had blown it in. 

Suddenly, above the tumult, a voice yelled; 

" Gas coming ! Get your masks ! " 

I turned helplessly to my guide, trembling with 
fear. But again he laughed in his mocking way. 

"We have no masks!" he answered harshly. "We 
have no guns nor ammunition! Don't you see that 
only the Germans are firing? Look through that 
hole! There are no entanglements — for we have no 

274 



"OF SHOES— OF SHIPS " 

wire 1 There is nothing to keep the boches from rush- 
ing us ! We have no bombs, no pistols, no rifles ! There 
are no tents nor ambulance hoods — for we have no 
duck! There are no tools to repair our machinery — 
and no mechanics ! We have no food ! We have noth- 
ing but our lives, and those are being thrown away, 
because the people at home are still asleep !" 



275' 



IX 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

"And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the 
fire: and after the fire a still small voice." 

It is a strange thing to come back to New York 
after an absence of nearly a year to find aeroplanes 
buzzing overhead, a captured U-boat in Central Park, 
service-flags covered with stars on every other build- 
ing, and to bump into one's family doctor on the street- 
corner in the uniform of a full-fledged major. It is 
even queerer to have one's wife going afoot to market 
every morning with a knitting-bag on her arm (camou- 
flaging the pot-roast and chuck steak), and one's 
daughter hurrying off to a business college to juggle 
all day with dots, dashes, and pothooks. These things 
for a returned Wall Street bond-broker are strange 
indeed — but strangest of all is the new inward and 
spiritual grace of which they seem to be the outward 
and visible signs. 

The other day I was riding up-town in the local 
Subway, where for several years I have had an oppor- 
tunity to study contemporary manners. Up to the 
time when I left the city ten months ago the male 

270 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

travellers had consisted of two classes: those who 
frankly refused to surrender their seats to a woman, 
and those who strove to hide their incivility by pre- 
tending not to see her. I will not state to which I 
belonged. At Canal Street a middle-aged woman 
carrying a bundle entered the car. She obviously 
did not expect to be offered a seat, and had quite 
naturally annexed a strap, when a young man in 
uniform arose at the other end of the car and ten- 
dered her his place. Before, in her embarrassment, 
she could either accept or decline it no less than half 
a dozen passengers nearer her had arisen and offered 
her their seats. From that moment until the train 
reached the Grand Central Station there was a con- 
test in politeness going on in that car which rivalled 
the etiquette of King Rene at his " Court of Love." 

There is a new spirit abroad to which everybody, 
from the sandwich-man to the railroad president, re- 
sponds — a spirit of cheerful co-operation. People are 
more friendly, they are politer, generally more decent. 
Respect for the uniform has jacked us all up several 
pegs. It has acted as a moral tonic for the whole coun- 
try, just as it has for the men who wear it. 

We of the cities, at any rate, had become bored 
with the old-fashioned virtues and callous to the out- 
ward observances of gentility. It was fashionable to 
be cynical. The passion for money-getting in the men 
of my o^vn class, which had numbed our spiritual fibre, 

277 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

had permeated the whole nation, and had engendered 
wide-spread industrial discontent and jealousy. As 
I have said, we were drunk with prosperity. Our ma- 
terialism was a byword among nations — themselves 
hardly less material. 

There had never been so much money anywhere 
in the world before. To-day skilled labor is still 
weltering in it. Harvesters and miners ride to work 
as a matter of course in their own motors. A couple 
of weeks ago in Miami, Arizona, I counted thirty- 
three automobiles standing in a row, belonging to 
workmen, outside the crusher of the Inspiration Mine. 
In the factory towns the girls spent their money on 
gloves, laces, and jewelry. There was a growing 
sexual immorality among the former poorer working 
class which was now so rapidly becoming well-to-do. 
Girls who could not buy jewelry and take trips to New 
York out of their own savings, did so out of the earn- 
ings of men. Their ambition was to become movie 
actresses at fabulous salaries. The "Vamp" was 
their ideal. Debauchery, eugenics, and degeneracy be- 
came common subjects for the screen, the stage, and 
periodical literature. There was a flood of frankly 
erotic magazines — Tough Tales, Saucy Stones, Naughty 
Novelettes, to paraphrase their titles — most of the 
readers of which were young girls. I saw it myself 
in my business trips and heard about it from my corre- 
spondents and employees. This was the reaction of 

278 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

the laboring class to the same conditions that plunged 
the rich into a riot of extravagance and dissipation. 

Wealth had had the same effect upon imperial 
Rome. As Winwood Reade says, referring to the de- 
cline of Egypt, in "The Martyrdom of Man": "The 
vast wealth and soft luxury of the new empire under- 
mined its strength. ... To the same cause may be 
traced the ruin and the fall, not only of Egypt, but of 
all the powers of the ancient world: of Nineveh, and 
Babylon, and Persia; of the Macedonian Kingdom and 
the Western Empire. As soon as those nations be- 
came rich they began to decay." 

Material prosperity, like that of England and 
America before the war, tends to render nations en- 
ervated and corrupt, depriving them of vigor, and 
making them susceptible to anarchy or other forms 
of social disease. Certainly civilization in 1914 had 
reached a state of extravagance and luxury which 
possibly only war or social revolution could have 
cured. Indeed, it seems to me that when the suffer- 
ings of the war shall be over, and men can look back 
calmly at the events and conditions that preceded 
it, it will be seen that not its least dramatic aspect 
was the sudden ending of the madness which had 
taken possession of society the world over. 

Shane Leslie, treating of social conditions in Eng- 
land just before the war, says: "The English fleet 
has been aptly compared to the Roman legions cut 

279 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

off from a decadent capital, to guard the world from 
the barbarians. Whether English society was suffer- 
ing from decay or development, symptoms made their 
appearance not far different from those which his- 
torians tell of the last phase of Roman history. The 
Colosseum once contained the same crowds of pallid 
unfit that watched the muddy arenas of English foot- 
ball. A similar indolent and half-educated bourgeoisie 
loafed in the imperial baths as attended English cricket. 
In the higher stage of society there was the same re- 
vulsion from the old-fashioned virtues and an ex- 
pressed contempt for whatever belonged to the Au- 
gustan, or in the latter case Victorian, age in writing 
or morals. London churches were deserted for week- 
end parties exactly as the temples were scorned by 
the jaded pleasure-seekers of Rome. Nobody in Eng- 
land took the sovereign's defensorship of the faith 
more seriously than the Romans took the deification 
of their Emperors. The state religion in London had 
a less hold on many than the charlatan, the theosophist, 
and the necromancer, just as Capitoline Jove and the 
matronly Juno were deserted for the more exciting 
deities of the East. Socially, women in London ex- 
changed family lockets for immodest charms. . . . 
The signs were present, even if the decay was not as 
deep as German sociologists wished to believe. War 
instantly restored the old stoical and patriotic vir- 
tues." 

280 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

So also in America the year 1914 saw the maximum 
of demoralization in social life. Periodical literature, 
often pandering to vice under the guise of teaching 
morality, reflected the eroticism that in most Amer- 
ican cities and in many country towns accompanied 
the effort to enjoy the sensations of sin while ostensibly 
lingering inside the pink palings of virtue. All this 
near-vice and flirtation with immorality was but the 
echo of what was going on in Europe, where the tide 
of degeneracy had reached its flood. In London, in 
Paris, in St. Petersburg, and— I speak without venom— 
especially in Berlin, the wearied seekers after pleasure, 
fatigued with the pursuit of Aphrodite, were resorting 
to exotic pleasures that rivalled those of the pagan 
civilizations. Not only had the demi-mondaine been 
made the pattern of fashion, not only did social inter- 
course savor largely of sexual intrigue, but the ennui 
of society showed itself in a fever of gambling at cards 
that rivalled the days of Charles James Fox, and worst 
of all the spread of the drug habit bid fair to under- 
mine what moral stamina still remained. 

All the world was dancing — if dancing it could be 
called — to the barbaric clash of cymbals and the crash 
of crockery, and the convolutions of the "tango lizard" 
to whom the young and temporarily innocent were 
shamelessly abandoned, would have brought a blush 
of shame to the bronzed cheek of any self-respecting 
nautch-girl or voodoo dancer. The search for some- 

281 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

thing new resulted in the taking up of all kinds of 
strange and occult "religions." In New York "The 
Great Oom " and others of like ilk were pursued by 
foolish women much as the children of Hamlen town 
followed after the Pied Piper, some to their lasting 
degradation; and, as Leslie says, the smart ladies of 
London crowded the parlors of the clairvoyants and 
fortune-tellers, and covered themselves with charms 
and amulets. 

The New York hotels were jammed from four o'clock 
on with turkey and fox trotters, where the tired busi- 
ness man could secure partners without formality, 
and presumably respectable wives and mothers con- 
tested the supremacy of the floor with painted ladies 
from the shabby sections adjacent to Times Square. 
Introductions were superfluous. The "the dansant" 
of the Broadway hotel was in fact as great a menace 
to domestic virtue as the "Haymarket" and "Turkish 
Village" of other days, or the "Ladies' Parlor" of the 
East Side saloon. At the swagger restaurants and 
private balls the seminudity of the dancers vied with 
the suggestiveness of the music, and the pantomime 
of the dance was accentuated by the breaking of glass 
and the pounding of tom-toms, assisted by whistles, 
catcalls, and yells from the orchestra. Any Congo 
chieftain who inadvertently wandered in would have 
felt entirely at home. And at the very climax of this 
crescendo of degeneracy came the distant rumble of 

282 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

war. The fox-trotters paused in their gyrations, the 
card-players glanced up apprehensively from the green 
tables, the fille de joie set down with a pale face the 
glass she had half raised to her red lips. 

I do not mean to suggest that vice has been ram- 
pant among the men and women I know along upper 
Fifth Avenue. It hasn't. For the most part they are 
rich and dull — meticulously respectable. But the 
license of Broadway and the Tenderloin has been re- 
flected in the entertainment provided for the young 
and in the extravagance of their elders. We have 
gorged ourselves with luxury, for we have lacked in- 
tellectual and spiritual aspirations. It is trite but 
nevertheless true that materialism had eaten into 
our natures, attacking and destroying the sturdier 
qualities inherited from our fathers. Often, the more 
respectable people were the most lavish and self-in- 
dulgent, for the reason that they had no real vices 
upon which to spend their money. The eating of 
elaborate dinners, like the smoking of cigars in the 
case of many of us men, became the chief end of 
existence. From the first of January to the end of 
March, without intermission, adult men and women 
went night after night, from one house to another, 
to a succession of costly entertainments where they 
sat, ate, and talked about little but their amusements 
from eight o'clock until eleven or twelve. To prepare 
themselves for the physical strain of these gastronom- 

283 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

ical events the women, at any rate, lay in bed until 
ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, and occupied 
themselves with trivialities, light literature, motor- 
ing, and card-playing throughout the day. Had any 
one suggested that they were leading lives closely akin 
to barbarism they would have been politely amused. 

The most obvious reform that the war has occasioned 
— and it was to be expected that where the conditions 
were the worst there the cure would be most pro- 
nounced — is the annihilation of class distinction and 
the reverence for wealth. It has come so swiftly and 
so easily, the transition is so complete and effectual, 
that it seems as if all the snobbery that went before 
must have been a sort of game which we played for 
the amusement of a few old ladies with our tongues in 
our cheeks. Wealth has ceased — except when en- 
gaging seats at after-theatre cabarets — to have any 
social significance. In a word, the great God Mam- 
mon has fallen flat, face downward in the dead ashes 
of his own altar. 

The old-fashioned fiction of a select circle — Society 
with a capital "S" — the old Four Hundred — already 
shattered before the war, has now been blown to atoms 
— to the universal satisfaction. The conventional 
dinner with its overloaded table and many guests 
is no longer "smart" or even correct. Heretofore a 
few bedizened dowagers have been struggling hero- 
ically against the rising tide of common sense to keep 

284 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

aloft the standard of exclusiveness. Reinforced by 
the moral effect of some scattering alliances with the 
genuine European nobility, they have in the past been 
able to maintain a fictitious social hierarchy. There 
was a time when some people felt aggrieved if they 
were not invited to Mrs. Astor's annual ball. To-day 
nobody is aggrieved at not being invited to anything, 
partly, to be sure, because they know that there isn't 
anything to be invited to. They have also suddenly 
realized that there really isn't anybody in New York 
or elsewhere who is entitled or qualified to pass on the 
social status of anybody else in America, where of all 
places in the world only what a man is, not what he 
has, should count. 

But the old regime has died hard. A scant half- 
dozen bearded female grenadiers still refuse to sur- 
render, even to the covert laughter of their grand- 
children. They are the last surviving members of 
Society. But they will not survive the war. After 
it is over, there will never be any Society of that 
sort again. What social life the debutante of 1918 
gets will be in the companionship of service. The 
dancing-men will dance no more. The "pet cats" 
and "parlor snakes" will all have slunk and wriggled 
out of sight. The aristocratic families will be those 
whose men and women have done most for their coun- 
try, not those whose ancestors "rose from rags to 
riches." There will be a new order of nobility, and 

285 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

our boys instead of becoming coal "barons," steel 
"kings," or "knights of industry," will be knighted 
upon the battle-field with the accolade of valor and 
self-sacrifice. 

The day of the gold-plate-rock-crystal-duck-and- 
champagne dinner is over for a long time to come. 
We are entering upon an era of social sanity, where 
display and extravagance will be viewed with disap- 
proval. 

The thought of the lavishness of only a year or two 
ago now fills one with disgust, and even to write of 
terrapin and Chambertin when the dead bodies of one's 
fellow beings are rotting in the mud in front of Ger- 
man trenches in Flanders seems trivial and heartless. 
But it has taken the horror of this frightful carnage 
to bring people to their senses. Perhaps nothing less 
would have jarred the self-complacent and comfort- 
able rich into seeing things in their true light. If it 
has done naught else it has brought about a world- 
wide readjustment of values. Socialism might have 
eventually accomplished the same result, but it would 
have achieved it only after a bitter struggle between 
classes. We might have had another French Revolu- 
tion. Now people are doing voluntarily what only 
the equivalent of the guillotine or the terror of the 
mob might have forced upon them. Strange that only 
the red-foamed mares of war, blindness, pestilence, 
and death, could induce people to live as their own 

286 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

mental and physical well-being require that they 
should. For it has not been common sense or eco- 
nomics that has led people to shorten their dinners — 
it has been the horror of the trenches, the suffering 
of the wounded in the hospitals, and the cries of the 
famished children of Belgium. Whatever the reason, 
let us hope that after the war there will be simply 
for their own sakes no reversion on the part of the 
wealthy to their former wastefulness. Let us hope 
that what the horror of the conflict has led them to 
abandon they may discard permanently because of 
the realization that it is a better way to live. 

A striking change has taken place in the entire out- 
look of those who have been heretofore referred to as 
society women. Hundreds of the ones who up to our 
entry into the war played bridge morning, afternoon, 
and night, seemingly with an utter disregard for the 
responsibilities of life, or spent their time lunching, 
going to the theatre and opera, or at their milliners 
and jewellers, have stopped short in their mad race 
for gayety and excitement, and to-day roll bandages 
at the same tables where yesterday they played double 
dummy. The money they threw away gambling at 
cards they now give to the Red Cross. At the summer 
resort of Bar Harbor alone four hundred thousand dress- 
ings were turned out in the three months of July, Au- 
gust, and September, 1917. At the very moment when 
the city-bred American women seemed at the lowest 

287 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

ebb of extravagance, idleness, and self-indulgence, 
when metropolitan life seemed rotten with the gangrene 
of materialism and luxury, the shudder of the guns 
along the western front ran down their spines and 
roused them to the consciousness that it was up to 
them to do something. And they have done it — done 
it as faithfully and perseveringly as their less wealthy 
sisters. Where they seemed quite mad before they 
have now become quite sane, and they have taken 
off their gloves and set to work with a will. Instead 
of the foolish chatter one has been compelled to listen 
to in the past, one begins to hear something resembling 
at least intelligent conversation. They are acutely 
interested in what is going on in Rome, London, Paris, 
and Salonika. Women who used to vie with one an- 
other in the display of dress and jewels, have put their 
pearls in the safe. But, most remarkable of all, where 
they have idled before they now with one accord pass 
busy days working with their hands. 

I believe that the tremendous change in morale ob- 
servable at the present time in the fashionable woman 
followed her reassumption of physical effort. Life had 
become so easy for her that Just as she no longer had 
to use her body she no longer used her mind. She 
had almost lost the creative instinct. Now that she 
has begun to use her hands she has started to use her 
mind again. She has rediscovered the joy of doing, 
the thrill of physical achievement. She no longer feels 

288 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

obliged to ring for her maid to perform the trifling 
service which she can just as well do for herself. 
And apart from the mere pleasure to be obtained from 
physical occupation she has learned anew — if, indeed, 
she had ever learned it before — the joy of service and 
of sharing with others. 

"It is a very wholesome and regenerating change," 
says President Wilson, " which a man undergoes when 
he 'comes to himself.' It is not only after periods of 
recklessness or infatuation, when he has played the 
spendthrift or the fool, that man comes to himself. 
He comes to himself after experiences of which he 
alone may be aware; when he has left off being wholly 
preoccupied with his own powers and interests, and 
with every petty plan that centres in himself; when 
he has cleared his eyes to see the world as it is, and 
his own true place and function in it." 

It has seemed to me, since my return to America 
after my long absence of nearly a year, that the Presi- 
dent's words are as apt when applied to a nation as 
to a man, and that at a time when his concern was 
with individuals rather than with peoples he may 
have unconsciously been prophesying the change that 
was later to take place in the nation of which he was 
to become the head. 

That there has been such a change — a startling and 
radical one — in the American people is indubitable, 
and it is no less certain that the war has brought this 

289 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

change about. What one bond-broker has observed 
of this alteration in the life about him, for what it 
may be worth of encouragement or of warning to his 
fellow Americans, it has been my purpose — the pur- 
pose of John Stanton of Pine Street, New York 

City — ^to record. What is there in fact on the credit 
side of our spiritual balance-sheet ? In the old phrase, 
let us take a brief account of stock. 

It sounds banal, now, to talk about the national 
conscience. Yet at the time of the sinking of the Lusi- 
tania I frankly believe that we had ceased to have 
any. Our grandiose conception of America was of a 
country too large in territory and enterprise to have 
any imity in its opinions or policies. That was how 
the Kaiser thought of us — unless, indeed, he regarded 
our public opinion as potentially German, which — 
shades of Dr. Dernberg ! — is possible. 

We were rather complacently accustomed to point 
out that, of course, there were so many different types 
of nationalities constituting the American people that 
we had no strictly national aims or ambitions except 
to be left alone — no principles except the particular 
form of "liberty" which we enjoyed — no doctrines 
to uphold except the moribund doctrine of Monroe. 
Indeed, some people went so far, only four or five years 
ago, as to prophesy more or less publicly that a nation 
which had so many local interests and prejudices could 
not permanently remain intact; that the West feared 

290 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

and distrusted Wall Street, and that the Mississippi 
formed a natural line of division between what might 
easily become two separate nations — the Western 
States of North America and the Eastern. Nobody 
took this sort of talk seriously, but it reflected some- 
thing behind it. The West did distrust Wall Street. 
Nobody blames it either. The trouble was that the 
West thought Wall Street filled a good deal bigger 
part of the cosmos than it does. But it was enough 
if Wall Street wanted something for a large part of 
the country to be opposed to it. 

Public opinion was local and divided. As a people 
we had lost the capacity for moral indignation. This 
was equally true of most of our larger cities, with the 
notable exceptions of Boston and Baltimore. That 
was the situation that confronted President Wilson. 
But now apathy has given place to patriotism — the 
West and the East are genuinely one. The son of the 
New York banker is bunking with the apple-grower's 
boy from Oregon. You do not hear people talking 
about the "West" and the "East" any longer — it is 
all "we" and "us." We have a national conscious- 
ness if not a national conscience. 

That is looking at it from the "longitudinal" point* 
of view. But there is another that is really more in- 
teresting, the "vertical," so to speak. What of the 
upper and the lower classes? Imagine the novelist's 
confusion after the war when he tries to write his 

291 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

sociological romance! The aristocracy of wealth and 
"position" has been utterly swept away and an aris- 
tocracy of ability and service substituted in its place. 
For illustration: a young man of good parts entered 
a certain Eastern university and although he was an 
excellent fellow a certain group of his classmates took 
occasion to make him feel that his social qualifications 
were not such as to warrant his inclusion into their 
charmed circle. The war broke out and all enlisted 
in the same service. In the training-camp these men 
still pursued their wretched policy of exclusiveness. 
At the end of a month the object of their contempt 
had shown such conspicuous qualifications for leader- 
ship that he had been put in command of the section 
to which they were assigned, and was giving them 
orders. Two weeks later he was given a commission 
as a captain and sent to France. Another month and 
he had been cited in the orders for the day for dis- 
tinguished bravery and coolness — while the youths 
who had thought themselves too good for him were 
still marching in columns of fours. This is not fiction, 
but fact. 

To-day the millionaire who isn't giving himself and, 
at least, a part of his wealth to the service of the na- 
tion is not cordially received. He can no longer buy 
immunity and retain his position in the community. 
His millions do not count in the scales of sacrifice 
against the life of the negro bell-hop from the Planter's 

292 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

Hotel. In the final test it may be that no one of us 
can keep both his life and his self-respect. If the su- 
preme test of being a gentleman is his willingness to 
lay down his life for a cause, hereafter whatever form 
socialism may take there will always be at least a mil- 
lion gentlemen in the United States. 

The millionaires are seizing the opportunity to try 
to justify their existence in this war. Most of them 
have made good. They read also the signs of the times. 
Many are becoming frankly socialistic, loud subscribers 
to the doctrine that nobody should get more than a 
reasonable profit out of any enterprise. The day of 
the multimillion fortune is over. Its possessor is 
to-day busily engaged in making excuses for having it. 
In many cases if he is too old to volunteer he has gone 
into the government service. 

It is a somewhat quaint experience to sit in a club 
window with a plutocrat who has spent most of his 
life in cursing the government and complaining of 
congressional interference with his business affairs, 
and listen to hun talk about what "we," i.e., the 
government of which he now forms a part, are going 
to do. It is equally refreshing to hear a railroad presi- 
dent bewailing the hesitation of the government in 
taking over control of the railroads. We shall have 
no more huge fortunes, no more moneyed aristocrats 
arising out of the artificial soil of special privilege. 
Hereafter the "upper" class will be composed ex- 

293 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

clusively of those who have earned the right to be 
there. 

The war has called a variety of things to our at- 
tention. It has taught us the relative "value-in-use" J 
of the different professions. The "saw-bones" has 
acquired a new dignity. We perceive that the lawyer _. 
and the politician, like the broker, is often a parasite. I 
We begin to grasp the importance of the actual pro- 1 
ducer — the fellow who breeds the cattle and hogs, that 
plants and harvests the crops and digs the copper and 
iron out of the earth. The laborer looms large on the 
horizon. We wonder at the reason for such a myriad 
of small shopkeepers. We observe with satisfaction 
that our form of government is suflBciently elastic 
to enable us not only to carry on a great war without 
breaking down (legal sharps and political croakers 
to the contrary), but to make the world safe for democ- 
racy by an exhibition of autocracy that might well 
have astonished Thomas Jefferson. Socialists, repub- 
licans, liberals, conservatives, populists, and reac- 
tionaries — our Bolsheviki and our Minimalists — are 
all gratified equally. We have discovered that in some 
of our legislation we have been trying to bite off the 
national nose in order to please the political face. We 
have come to regard as easily mutable institutions 
that two years ago seemed as firm as the Pyramids. 
Not only do we not rebel at revolutionary income 
taxes but we seem to be glad of the chance to pay them. 

294 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

The wealthy face the probability of a change in their 
condition with equanimity. It is almost as if they 
feel that they have had more than enough, and so 
long as everybody is treated alike they won't mind 
having less. In fact, the suggestion that the cottages 
of Newport summer residents should be commandeered 
for shipyard workers was sympathetically received by 
their owners. Everybody seems glad to give away 
his money if only somebody will tell him exactly how 
to do it. 

But, of course, the chief effect of the war has been 
as a moral stimulant. It has keyed us up to a new 
interest in everything from life to death, and the best 
way of living and dying. We had all settled down into 
the comfortable hypothesis that our old world had 
at last been shaken pretty definitely into shape. We 
believed that international and commercial relation- 
ships had become so complex that war was an impos- 
sibility — a "great illusion," indeed! We had worked 
down deeper and deeper into our social and spiritual 
ruts. We were exceedingly comfortable and becoming 
more so all the time. We argued from fixed premises, 
based on universal experience since the Franco-Prus- 
sian War. The most revolutionary things that we 
could envisage were new plays, new religions, and new 
art movements — cubist painting, spiritualism, and 
Bernard Shaw. Then while the sky was still blue and 
the sunlight was bright in our eyes the ground shook 

295 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

and we were sent sprawling like tenpins. The earth- 
quake toppled over our ancient attitudes and processes 
of thought and set our spiritual bones to rattling. 
We were like a lot of comatose clocks all put ticking 
again. Some ticked faster than others, to be sure, but 
they all ticked — even those which had never ticked 
before. A lot of people discovered for the first time 
that they had real emotions — were really alive — people 
whose mental and moral works had become so rusty 
that they had entirely stopped thinking and feeling 
years ago. The old set phrases about life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness which they had been taught 
in childhood, and now and again had repeated mechani- 
cally, suddenly glowed with a divine fire. Life and 
liberty became precious possessions — not vague ab- 
stractions. 

We have had shock after shock. The earthquake 
has aroused our interest not only in war but in every- 
thing else — in geography, hygiene, physics, philosophy, 
religion, sociology, politics. It has knocked the cob- 
webs out of our drowsy brains. It has made possible 
ideas before viewed as almost Utopian and fantastic — 
woman suffrage, prohibition, the conquest of the depths 
of the sea and the highest reaches of the air, and govern- 
mental control of both. It has made Jules Verne, 
Kipling, and H. G. Wells seem like very ordinary folk. 
We speak quite naturally of a "Caproni Limited," 
Rome-Fayal-New York, in thirty-six hours as soon 

296 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

!" as the war is over. It has made us realize that India 
and China, Siberia and East Africa, New Zealand and 
Morocco, Armenia, Arabia, and Egypt exist not merely 
on lantern-slides or as colored patches on the plates 
of atlases but are concrete and easily reached places. 
It has given us new thought for our physical well- 
being. The health of the nation has improved. It 
has given us a sense of the adventure of life and the 
greater adventure of death. We have the feeling of 
exhilaration that comes from the realization that we 
are living still on the frontier of the unknown. It has 
sobered the young and inoculated the old with youth. 
It has started a new search for religion and evoked 
a new faith. We dimly perceive the relation of the 
individual to the cosmos and the trifling value of hu- 
man life, as compared with the way it should be lived. 
It has given a new lease of life to the man who was 
tired of it because he seemed to be simply "marking 
time," to the ne'er-do-well and to the failure who have 
been given an opportunity to retrieve themselves. 
It has brought out the inherited good qualities in the 
rich man's son which otherwise would have lain dormant 
through indolence or complacency. It has given the 
successful business or professional man his opportunity 
to become a national figure instead of merely to go on 
adding to his investments and has taught him that 
loving favor is better than silver and gold; that true 
success lies not in what we have but in what Vv'e are. 

297 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

For many It has done vastly more. Some indeed 
have been spiritually reborn. And some have died 
heroically with the allied armies in the bloody slough 
of France and Belgium, or in the smoke-filled air above 
it. Of these chivalric men and of those belonging to 
them I do not speak. For while the nation has "come 
to itself," while its regeneration has been begun, that 
regeneration is far from being accomplished. 

In gross the national response to the call to arms 
has been magnificent, even astonishing. We have 
already contributed six billions of dollars, enlisted 
seven hundred thousand volunteer soldiers in the 
Regular Army and the National Guard, constructed 
thirty-two marvellous cities for our armies in train- 
ing, outlined and begun the building of ships aggregat- 
ing over ten million dead tonnage, drafted seven hun- 
dred thousand men into service, sent an effective fleet 
of torpedo-boat destroyers to England, raised a hun- 
dred million dollars for the Red Cross and thirty million 
for the Y. M. C. A., put into operation a complicated 
system of food administration and conservation, and 
started a military and naval programme that in two 
years may rival what it has taken Germany fifty years 
to perfect. That is tremendous ! 

The world has never seen anything more heroic 
than the splendid fashion in which mothers and wives 
all over the land, with smiles on their faces and songs 
on their lips, are sending their boys and their young 

298 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

husbands to the front. We sing no songs of hate on 
this side of the water — as yet. Let us hope that we 
never shall and that we can fight out this war in the 
same spirit that we went into it — to maintain the 
ideals of humanity, and keep the world a decent and 
pleasant place to live in. 

We can afford to be proud of our volunteers, of our 
American women, of our fifty thousand buyers of 
Liberty Bonds, of the clerks, artisans, servants, and 
trained nurses who have contributed toward the Red 
Cross, of our rich men and of our poor men who are 
working together with undivided purpose, of all we 
have already accomplished and all we are going to 
do. Yet we must not forget that so far it has been 
done almost without losing a life, going without a 
meal, or giving up anything that was really necessary 
to our comfort. 

We have a right to be confident of the sincerity of 
our patriotism, our generosity, and our courage. But 
so far what we have accomplished has been done to 
the waving of flags and to bands playing "Over There 
— over there — over there ! " 

The enthusiasm with which we have thrown our- 
selves into the struggle must not be allowed to beget 
an undue assurance. We as a people are prone to 
think that we can do anything. We have an unbounded 
confidence in the inexhaustible nature of the material 
resources of our country and its wealth, in the " smart- 

299 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

ness" of our business men, the "cleverness" of our 
inventors, and in the bravery of our youth. We boast 
that once let our boys get at them and it will be all 
over with the boches. Some of our soldiers have been 
ill-advised enough to say to the French in so many 
words that they have come over to win the war for 
them. Our enthusiasm is quite American. There is 
a good deal in Hindenburg's remark that America is 
the land that produced Barnum. There is something 
of the "whoop-Ia!" about it. We are entirely too 
confident. We have little realization of Germany's 
tremendous power and malignity. We may need to 
have the national bumptiousness spanked out of us. 

Our enthusiasm is commendable — so long as we 
are not deceived by our own uproar. As our grand- 
mothers used to warn us, "what's violent isn't lasting." 
This has got to last. We have been enthusiastic be- 
fore. We like it. We enjoy the sensation. We were 
enthusiastic — very — over Admiral Dewey, and we have 
enthused over others also who in the end hkewise 
wondered why. Enthusiasm is our specialty, like ad- 
vertising. It is advertising. The "slicker" uniform 
is unpleasantly ubiquitous. Some of our wives and 
daughters are less genuinely self-sacrificing than they 
are enamoured of the mummery of "Heroland," of 
sitting in costume and becoming veils in Red Cross 
booths, or rushing around in flag-bedecked motors 
on Liberty Loan "drives" — the driving being often 

300 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

only motor driving — of all the little conspicuosities 
that were never permitted them before. Particularly 
do many of them enjoy being allowed to address the 
other sex on equal terms without imputation of bold- 
ness. For some of the older ones, with whom possible 
romance is not involved, there is the grateful sense of 
being one in a great movement, of being busy — even 
if only moderately where before they were entirely 
idle, of being somewhat unselfish and of doing a little 
something for others. It is surprising how much satis- 
faction of this sort can be extracted from knitting one 
pair of socks or going without filet mignon on odd 
Thursdays. 

This dilettante patriotism is a bad thing for the 
reason that it comes out like a rash and then fre- 
quently goes away. The girl who ought to be boning 
from five to eight hours a day at shorthand in a busi- 
ness school for ten months, gets more praise and more 
attention by looking attractive and pretty for a single 
evening at a Red Cross fair. The bazaar business 
— the parade of service — the "halo-grabber" — must 
go. In their place has got to come the realization that 
the war cannot and will not be won to the braying of 
brass bands but by gomg without bread — not by don- 
ning becoming clothes but by saving coal and studymg 
household economics — not by doing something we 
rather enjoy but by giving up something that hurts, 
such as our automobiles. I say it advisedly; there 

301 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

are women in every large city of the United States 
wlio could more easily bid good-by to their husbands 
or their sons, and see them march away in uniform 
to the sound of the bugle and the cheers of the crowd, 
than they could give up the luxuries incident to their 
accustomed way of living; they could better bear a 
comfortable grief than an uncomfortable household, 
although the family circle remained intact. But if 
the war is to be won, the hearth and the larder may 
both be nearly empty. 

We must not forget that there are thousands of 
Americans, unworthy, to be sure, of the name, who 
having profited by the war would not be averse secretly 
to seeing it continue. There are hundreds of thou- 
sands whose lives the war has not touched at all. The 
industrial world is humming and a golden harvest is 
being reaped by workers and owners, in spite of war- 
taxes and the Priority Board. The laborer has never 
known greater prosperity. He is buying pianos, au- 
tomobiles, hall-clocks, and talking-machines. He is 
renting the house his superintendent used to occupy. 
In the cities many of the big hotels have recovered 
from their first spasm of profit-patriotism, and crowd 
their menus with the same multitude of elaborate 
dishes at advanced prices. The waiter serves the of- 
ficer in uniform with whiskey charged for as " sarsapa- 
rilla." I know of a New York man who within a week 
has bought for his wife a necklace of matched pearls 

302 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

at the price of five hundred thousand dollars. Private 
owners are still running acres of greenhouses while the 
country shivers and our transports are harbor-bound 
for coal. The fur trade has been booming. Detec- 
tives hunt for storehouses in which are "cached" hoards 
of fuel, sugar, flour, while war millionaires dine their 
friends in unabated lavishness. 

Optimism is prone to confuse what the war has al- 
ready done with what, if it continues, it may be des- 
tined to do. To claim that America's regeneration 
has been accomplished is to confuse individuals with 
the nation at large. That is my only criticism of Mr. 
John Jay Chapman's inspiring article "The Bright 
Side of the War" in the January (1917) Atlaiitic, 
where he says: 

"It is the great pain which we have passed through, 
and are still in the midst of, which has opened our 
eyes and sharpened our ears till we understand many 
things which were formerly thought to be paradox. 
Nothing else except pain ever revealed these things 
to mankind. The world's religious literature has been 
the fruit and outcome of suffering. Therefore, it is 
that the meaning of psalm, poem, and tragedy blossoms 
in the heart of persons who are passing through any 
great anguish. . . . To-day ... is an era of prophecy 
and the prophet, and things are valued in terms of 
the spirit; Life and Death are viewed as part of a 
single scheme. The inordinate value set on life during 

303 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

periods of prosperity vanished when the hostilities be- 
gan. The deepest moral mystery of the world, the 
mystery of sacrifice, was recognized, understood, and 
acted upon by every one as a matter of course; and 
a wholesome glow came over humanity in consequence. 
The average soul was turned right side out for the 
first time in its experience; and all the forms of 'con- 
version' with which philosophy has wrestled for cen- 
turies were found beside the hearth and in the market- 
place." 

That is finely put. It is doubtless true of France 
and of England. It is true of those of us who have in 
fact suffered; but it is not true of our nation as a whole. 
The United States has not suffered — ^yet. Rather 
we have only declared in clarion tones our willingness 
to suffer. A "wholesome glow" is ours in consequence, 
but as a nation of over one hundred millions we are 
far from having been "turned right side out." That 
will come — when we have suffered as a people as the 
other peoples have suffered; it will come after our 
purification by fire. It would be more just to say that 
as a nation we had "come to ourselves" — to that 
realization of our true estate which is the first and 
essential step in regeneration. 

My halting and disconnected record of what the 
great war has so far done to and for my family, my 
friends, and myself is finished. The first phase of our 
experience — the first shock of the earthquake — is over. 

304 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

For the moment America pauses, holding her breath, 
waiting to see whether peace may come, or whether 
the armies of the West will once more hm*l themselves 
against one another with unabated determination and 
ferocity. So I, too, pause and lay down my pen, for 
what is to come no man may know. 

Already the war has taken toll of millions of lives. 
Its material cost is beyond the hazard of the economist. 
Hereafter history will date not only from the Chris- 
tian era but also from the crucifixion of Belgium. Yet 
often I feel that most of us are as oblivious of what is 
transpiring as the workaday inhabitants of Jerusalem 
were two thousand years ago of the sacrifice upon the 
Mount of Olives. 

For three years the youth of the world has poured 
out its blood, dying that humanity — that we — might 
be saved. Were we worth saving? Are we worth 
saving ? If we were not, if we are not, may their sacri- 
fice not make us so — in spite of ourselves? For I 
now believe that the regeneration of the world began 
with the defense of Belgium — and that in this coming 
regeneration America is included. On the borders of 
that little country Might and Right — Paganism and 
Christianity — faced one another. Humanity — liberty 
— democracy hung in the balance. The Hun with 
his sword at her throat offered her life in return for 
honor. Calmly — with full knowledge of the conse- 
quences—the choice was made and Belgium was cruci- 

305 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

fied upon the Calvary of Self-sacrifice. She could save 
others, herself she could not save. 

We must be ready to do no less than little Belgium. 
I am confident that we are prepared to do it, yet I 
fear that we do not realize what we may be called upon 
to undergo. We do not as a people understand the 
infamy of Germany's treacherous tongue and brutal 
sword. We do not grasp the significance of President 
Wilson's declaration that we cannot treat with the 
military descendants of the Teutonic Knights. For 
this is a struggle for existence between the gospel of 
terror and that of humanity, between barbarism and 
civilization, between tyranny and liberty, between a 
cruel and merciless paganism and the teachings of 
Jesus Christ. 

It is a struggle that can know no compromise. 
"So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged 
by the law of liberty. For he shall have judgment 
without mercy that hath showed no mercy. . . ." 

Should we falter in our duty and for the sake of our 
lives or of our comfort enter into an inconclusive peace 
we should condone murder, betray our allies, and aban- 
don those who have died fighting for that liberty whose 
torch America still holds aloft for the world to see. 
We shall not fail, but we shall be sorely tried. 

"And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and 
strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces 
the rocks before the Lord ; but the Lord was not in the 

306 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR US 

wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord 
was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake 
a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the 
fire a still small voice. . . . And the Lord said. . . . 
And it shall come to pass, that him that escapeth the 
sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay; and him that escapeth 
from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay. Yet I have 
left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which 
have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which 
hath not kissed him." 



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